Browne fraud charges dropped

After filing a lawsuit with the Nassau County District Attorney's office alleging Tax Revolt Party petition fraud against 5th Legislative District Republican candidate Chris Browne in September, Nassau County Democratic Party officials now say there is no evidence linking Browne to the alleged fraud, and have dropped the charges against him.

"The only thing we told the D.A. was Browne did not have his signature on the fraudulent petition, and while the petitions were clearly a product of fraud, we could not conclusively prove Browne orchestrated them" said Steve Schlesinger, an attorney for the Nassau County Democratic Party, who filed the suit in September on behalf of Democratic election worker, Kenneth Dash. "Nothing we said or did diminishes the fact that the petitions were an out and out fraud, and it is for the D.A. to determine who is criminally capable."

County Republicans had withdrawn their petition — which they had filed with the county Board of Elections to secure the Tax Revolt Party line for Browne on Election Day — after county Democrats challenged its validity in court. Democrats alleged that over half of the 1,300 signatures were fraudulent, but Republicans withdrew the petition before anyone was called to testify.

Dash, however, took the allegations a step further, claiming in a Sept. 9 letter to the county D.A. that Browne had directed the individuals collecting signatures for the petition to intentionally garner fraudulent signatures, a fact Browne has repeatedly denied.

In September, both the Democratic and Republican elections commissioners said that Browne could not be held liable for the alleged fraud because he had not signed the petition, but it was not until Nov. 4, just one day after Election Day, that the suit against Browne was withdrawn. When asked of the timing of the withdrawal, Schlesinger said, "The reason [Dash] dropped it was to settle a libel suit brought by Browne. Ken didn't want to spend the resources defending himself against Browne, who was a lawyer representing himself."

But Browne claimed that the entire case against him was politically motivated, cooked up by Democrats to damage his credibility in a tough battle against Scannell in the 5th L.D. race, which may be decided by a couple hundred votes pending a county Board of Elections recount. Browne said he understands the competitive nature of politics, but in his mind, by filing criminal charges against him with the D.A., Democrats "crossed the line."

"The letter demonstrated, in my view, that all of the charges that the Democrats and Joe Scannell levied against me were lies and they knew them to be false when they made them," Browne said of the Nov. 4 letter to the D.A. "And I think it reflects very poorly on the campaign that Mr. Scannell and the Democrats ran, that they stooped to these tactics. They spent the entire campaign trying to bring down my character.

"I ran a campaign on the issues — aggressive, yes, but on Mr. Scannell's record, not on his character," Browne continued, comparing his campaign to the one run by Democrats. "They did the opposite."

Browne added that he has dropped his defamation lawsuit against Dash, which he had filed in response to Dash's lawsuit.

As of Monday, Scannell was leading by Browne by 365 votes in unofficial tallies cited by the county Board of Elections. Four hundred and sixteen votes have yet to be counted. For updates, see this week's front page and visit www.liherald.com/baldwin.

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