A flurry of new documents relating to Sheldon Silver’s criminal case will be unsealed Friday at 9 a.m., a Manhattan federal judge ruled.
At the heart of the secret files is a mysterious “Sealed Party A” – an unidentified woman whose name was never mentioned at the disgraced ex-Assembly speaker’s corruption trial last year.
But her high-powered attorney Abbe Lowell has been fighting tooth and nail to stop the documents from going public.
Judge Valerie Caproni said the filings – which pertain to a hearing last October about evidence that wasn’t presented at trial – add to Silver’s already tarnished reputation as ex-Assembly Speaker.
She alluded that the secret documents are related to “misuses of [Silver’s] public office.”
“This is not one of his better moments,” Caproni said in court.
The judge also noted that Lowell’s client was a public figure — and for that reason, there was a public interest in the matter.
Caproni sided with lawyers for the New York Times and NBC, which fought to unseal the records, saying she’s been “running afoul of the First Amendment” in delaying its release.
“They will be unsealed first thing tomorrow morning … unless somebody stops me from the 17th floor [appeals court],” the judge said.
At one point, she joked with Silver’s lawyer Steven Molo about having to speak in coded language about the secret docs.
“I feel like a gangster having a conversation,” she laughed.
Release of the files, which will be redacted, could be held up if lawyers appeal Caproni’s unsealing order.
Silver was convicted in a $5 million corruption case in which he got kickbacks in exchange for favorable treatment as one of the most powerful men in Albany.
He will be sentenced May 3.