Page 7 of The Honest Affair
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York resigns
In a surprise announcement, Seymour Taft has resigned as U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. Speculation about Taft’s potential corruption was rife when he was tapped to replace Sanjay Ramamurthy after the 2016 election, but grew louder when his office declined to prosecute former munitions contractor John Carson on federal charges of arms and human trafficking. Carson was killed in May, but last month a hack of Taft’s files revealed he had been gifted several large stock holdings from Carson two months before his appointment, and that his portfolio was subsequently reinvested in a fund managed by Calvin Gardner, who is facing charges of human trafficking as a part of Carson’s operation.
Rhonda Klein, a deputy attorney in the southern district, will be the acting U.S. attorney until another is appointed by the district judges, a process that could take months.
“I have no connection to John Carson, Jude Letour, Calvin Gardner, nor any other members of the alleged trafficking ring in the Northeast that has caught the attention of the public in recent months,” she said in a statement outside the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn, only two blocks from the district attorney’s building at 350 Jay Street. “Human trafficking is a massive problem in this country, and I will not rest until I am certain this office has done everything it can to cooperate with the local authorities who have valiantly pursued this case, beginning with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office tomorrow morning. This is a human rights issue, and certainly a federal one. We will not stand idly by.”
Jude Letour and Calvin Gardner were both arrested in May, while a larger trafficking ring across New England and the tristate area, headed by Ben Vamos, was broken up last month. While no official connections have been made between the two, Mr. Gardner’s childhood relationship to Vamos emerged last month and has provoked questions about whether or not Gardner and Vamos had been working together from the start.
Mr. Gardner and Mr. Letour both await trials due to start within the next few months.
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The New York Times
November 15, 2018
Socialite sentenced in trafficking case
New York heiress Nina Astor de Vries was sentenced today on charges of accessory to human trafficking and fraud. Despite remaining married to financier and real estate investor Calvin Gardner, de Vries has reassumed her maiden name after filing for divorce.
The judge agreed with the DA’s request for relative clemency, awarding only forty-five days of jail time and three hundred hours of community service to Ms. de Vries. She checked into Rikers Correctional Facility earlier this morning and is expected to serve only a short time of her sentence.
“Relief,” she said sharply when asked how she felt. “And gratitude.”
Although Executive Assistant District Attorney Greg Cardozo declined to comment on the sentencing, many suspect that Ms. de Vries made a plea bargain with the DA in exchange for testimony against her husband’s involvement in a larger human trafficking operation.
Calvin Gardner’s trial was delayed again after his wife confessed to her crimes. A new date has not yet been announced.