Cafero Bid for Judgeship Clouded by “Johnny Angel” and Federal Probe.
Connecticut’s Judicial Selection Commission’s commitment to its public trust will be tested next week when it considers the application of House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero’s application to become a judge of the state’s Superior Court. Approval by the commission is the first step in the process that includes nomination by the governor and confirmation by the both houses of the legislature.
Cafero, who is leaving the legislature after 22 years, will make his case in a secret session before the 12-member board. The Norwalk Republican makes his bid for the safe harbor of the bench as he continues to draw the attention of Federal criminal investigators.
Commission members will get an opportunity to ask a question that continues to dog Cafero in the aftermath of his 2012 encounter with FBI informant Raymond Soucy. When the state employee union activist put $5,000 in Cafero’s legislative office refrigerator, why didn’t Cafero call the police? Instead, Cafero returned the cash, summoned an aide (“Johnny Angel”) and accepted the laundered money for House Republican campaign committees in checks from stooges. The video of Cafero’s unseemly encounter with Soucy became a centerpiece in the 2013 trial of former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan campaign aide Robert Braddock.
If the commission properly discharges its duties, members will want to know the details of the ongoing federal investigation of House Republican campaign practices. They will want to ask if any of Cafero’s colleagues at Brown Rudnick, the Hartford law and lobbying firm where Cafero is a contract partner, have been questioned by investigators. They also have a duty to extract details of what investigators have asked him, what he knows of the investigation, and how he’s paid for legal representation in the investigation that broke into public view in February. Has Cafero been able to provide all the records investigators have requested? Did he accept any gifts (trips, transportation, food, alcohol, cruises on the water) from any contractor doing business with House Republican campaign committees or candidates?
The commission will not need to ask the eternal question, “Would we embarrass ourselves by approving your application?” Everyone knows the dispiriting answer to that.