I don’t expect much truth when I visit the political gossip sites authored by Joe Illuzzi and his former employee Glenn Gramigna. I read them to see who they’re bowing and scraping to, what stories and rumors they’re being paid to promote. Both—the Scientologist Gramigna and the born-again Christian Illuzzi—engage in wanton slander and misrepresentation. (And I use that term as a writer, not a lawyer.) I can’t imagine why anyone would take them seriously, or why so many politicians support their con.

Today Gramigna goes too far with this post, in which he suggests that housing activist Dick Kern, late of Buffalo and currently of Minneapolis, has confessed to writing the nonsense about Byron Brown that led to the Syaed Ali affair.

Here’s what Gramigna posted:

Ex Buffalo Activist Admits Writing Notorious, Totally False Byron Brown E-Mails

Written by Glenn Gramigna, Editor

FORMER LOCAL ACTIVIST, GADFLY ADMITS WRITING LIBELOUS, COMPLETELY INACCURATE BYRON BROWN E-MAILS IN PHONE CONVERSATIONS NewWNYPolitics has learned that a former Buffalo political activist, who has since left town, has admitted authorship of that notorious series of e-mails which falsely sought to implicate Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown in various forms of improper conduct. The confessions came in a series of phone calls this individual has made recently. Known to mix erratic behavior with occasionally intelligent critiques of area shortcomings, this person has stayed active in local affairs through e-mails and phone calls, while living out of the area in recent years. His signed e-mails often consist of wild charges and bizarre claims, not unlike those contained in the civilly actionable series of untrue cyberspace attacks aimed at the Mayor. Meanwhile, despite the claims of some, WNY information technology entrepreneur Syaed Ali, has not permanently forsaken Buffalo for Toronto, Stamford, CT or anywhere else. Instead, this 25 year old high tech professional is currently on a business trip to the West Coast and intends to return to the Queen City soon.

Dick Kern has been a lot of things to a lot of people, but there one thing he’s never been: anonymous. The emails about Brown were sent under a pseudonym. Leaving out the absurd content, with which Kern would have no truck, anonymity is by itself enough to disqualify Kern as the sender.

Earlier this week, Kern asked Syaed Ali for an update on the job opening she’s been advertising on Gramigna’s site. Ali responded with a request that Kern cease and desist from emailing him.

And today Gramigna, who’s been happily accepting advertising from Ali’s company since the scandal broke in January, comes out with this nonsense.

Last Thursday, attorney William F. Trezevant filed a letter with Buffalo’s City Clerk, addressed to Common Council President David Franczyk. In the letter, Trezevant formally requested that Franczyk open an investigation into Ellicott District Councilmember Brian Davis. I’ll paste the whole letter at the end, but here’s the gist: Davis’s check-bouncing may be more than just an isolated incident; he may have used his position as a member of Council to intimidate those with whom he cashed bad checks; and he may have inappropriately steered loans and grants toward One Sunset, the restaurant at the center of Davis’s very public bad check scandal.

For all the reasons, he says, Franczyk should conduct an investigation. For good measure, Trezevant tells Franczyk that the Council ought to investigate the Syaed Ali situation, too.

Now, Davis is likely to dismiss Trezevant’s letter as the work of a political opponent—just as he tried to dismiss allegations by Lower West Side deli owners that he had bounced checks in their stores as rumors spread by political opponents.

In any case, it should make for an interesting Common Council meeting on Tuesday.

The letter:

Honorable David A. Franczyk
President of the Common Council
City of Buffalo
1315 City Hall
65 Niagara Square
Buffalo, New York 14202

March 5, 2009

Dear Councilman Franczyk:

On behalf of a number of Buffalo residents, I am writing to request that the Common Council conduct formal hearings regarding certain matters which are described below.  These matters involve allegations of misconduct elected and appointed city officials, and as such any investigation of these matters properly rests with the Common Council.

First, as you may be aware, there have been a series of published reports regarding the private financial dealings of Councilman Davis.  While this is not normally an item that would lend itself to a Common Council hearing, there are additional facts regarding Mr. Davis, that if true, represents abuse of his official capacity.

In this regard, there have been published reports in the local media, (i.e. Artvoice) that Mr. Davis’s activity of passing bad checks to local businesses is not a singularly isolated event involving the restaurant formerly know as One Sunset.

Rather, there have been allegations made and independently confirmed that Mr. Davis has repeatedly engaged in a systematic pattern of bouncing checks at neighborhood corner stores.  When store owners sought to recoup the monies they had provided to Mr. Davis, these store owners were threatened with the closing of either their businesses or those of their relatives.  When threatened in this manner, the store owners chose to abandon their collection efforts.

The point here is clear.  These allegations, if true, constitute a criminal offense.  Moreover, the pattern of criminal activity combined with the threat to use his elected position to single out and punish his victims is an outrageous abuse of public office.  Normally these criminal matters would be investigated by the Buffalo Police Department, but in this case, Mr. Davis sits as the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee.  As a result, none of these allegations have been investigated by anyone except the media which has been able to confirm the allegations.  I am requesting that the Council perform an investigation of these issues.

Second, there have been allegations made that Mr. Davis has used public monies for his private enterprises.  To wit, there has been a particularly disturbing assertion that CBDG monies which were designated for the Ellicott District were instead directed to the One Sunset business.  In addition, there is an allegation that BERC monies were also used to assist the One Sunset business, monies that were redirected from other projects.

There is no way to independently ascertain the truth or falsity of these allegations.  Thus, I am requesting that the Council perform an investigation of these issues as well.

Third, as you may know, on November 7, 2008, members of the Buffalo Police Department searched the home of Syaed Ali at his Breckenridge address.  Pursuant to this search, a number of his belongings were confiscated. Subsequent to this search, Buffalo Police Officers questioned Mr. Ali regarding his connection local elected officials, including City of Buffalo Council Members.  It has now been approximately 16 ½ weeks and his property has not been returned, nor have any formal charges been filed against Mr. Ali.  What is particularly troubling is the role of the Buffalo Police Department in this matter.

Under normal circumstances, the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee would be charged with conducting just such an investigation.  However, there has been no such hearing inasmuch as Mr. Davis is the Chair of the Committee and is apparently embroiled in his own issues which may or may not be the subject of a Buffalo Police investigation itself.

As a result, the important work of the Common Council regarding serious issues has gone wanting.  There is a distinct and palatable disdain and mistrust with open discussions of a coordinated cover-up of these issues.  The Common Council is the only body with the ability to investigate these matters and I hereby request that the Common Council do so.  In addition, I request that the Common Council remove Mr. Davis as the Chair of the Buffalo Police Oversight Committee given the obvious conflict of interest.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at your convenience.

Very truly yours,

William F. Trezevant, Esq.

Cc:     City Clerk
Common Council

Syaed Ali, of course, is the guy we first wrote about on January 9: He’s the young man from a Bangladeshi family who lives on Breckenridge Street, and is accused of emailing fake press releases making salacious allegations about the private life of Mayor Byron Brown last summer. In November, Buffalo Police, armed with a search warrant signed by City Court Judge Craig Hannah, a Brown appointee, ransacked Ali’s house, confiscated his and his family’s possessions, took Ali downtown, and questioned him for several hours. No arrest, no arrest warrant, no lawyers, no phone call. Going on four months later, Ali still has not been charged and Buffalo Police have returned none of his and his family’s possessions.

Syaed Ali

Ali began talking to AV in January and hasn’t stopped talking. This, while certainly Ali’s right, presents something of a problem for the lawyer he’s retained, Richard Grimm III of the firm Magavern Magavern & Grimm: All this talking with the media runs the risk of compromising the lawsuit they intend to file, if Ali’s narrative changes over time in even the slightest detail.

And the attention Ali has demanded also draws reports like this one by Buffalo Geek, who this morning dives into one of the many, many deep pools of weirdness in the case. Read the whole thing over there, but here’s the gist: Ali’s claims about his IT business, SAIL-IT Inc., seem grossly exaggerated. As a result, Ali’s credibility suffers.

Happily for Ali and his lawyer, the other side of the case has not fared much better, in terms of establishing credibility.

After insisting that he could not speak about an ongoing investigation, or even acknowledge that there was one, Buffalo Police spokesman Mike DeGeorge went ahead and told other media that the investigation was heading in the direction of aggravated harassment and criminal impersonation, and that the involvement of state and federal agencies might lead to further charges. That last part turned out not to be true: The same week that DeGeorge made this statement, both state and federal law enforcement agencies made it clear to me that they have no continuing interest in the Syaed Ali case.

A little over a week ago, a new rumor surfaced that a state law enforcement agency had become involved, and that local politicians had been summoned to speak to this agency about their relationship and correspondence with Ali. If local state law enforcement agents are investigating, they are acting without the blessing or knowledge of their superiors: Representatives from the New York State Police and the the New York State Attorney General’s office told me last week, categorically and on the record, that their agencies are not involved in the case—not on any level, local or otherwise.

I’ve been told that the source of this latest rumor is the mayor’s office, which hopes to trace those salacious emails through Syaed Ali and back to Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, the mayor’s chief Democratic rival. I don’t know if that’s true, but the source is solid. (Hoyt has denied any role in the emails, and says he met Ali once last summer, for about 20 minutes, as a result of Ali’s part is an effort to draft New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for president.) If someone in City Hall is spreading false rumors about the case, that suggests they have something to hide.

Most importantly, no one yet has denied the events of November 7. No one has refuted Ali’s story of his detention and the confiscation of his and his family’s possessions—on the contrary, Buffalo Police acknowledge possession of the materials they seized from Ali’s house, though their inventory is much shorter than the list of items missing produced by Ali and his family. No one so far has produced the affidavit that backs the search warrant signed by Hannah. No one has yet explained how sending fraudulent press releases to a wide distribution list is criminal.

Whatever the claims Ali makes about his business, true or false; whether or not he sent those emails, and whether or not Sam Hoyt conspired with him or had knowledge of what he was going to do;  regardless of the sordid playground politics that underpin this whole affair: If Ali’s claims about what happened to him on November 7 are true, then anyone party to the search of his house and his detention may be in big trouble.

Grimm filed a notice of claim against the City of Buffalo in December. The lawsuit will proceed in April. If he and Ali can hold on until then, much more of the story will become public record.

The Buffalo Ruse has breaking news related to the Syaed Ali affair, in which Mayor Byron Brown apparently sicced Buffalo Police on a young man suspected of circulating obnoxious emails about Brown:

Mayor receives ‘male enhancement’ email from unknown person, requests search warrant for every Buffalo resident.

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Syaed Ali

WNYMedia’s Chris Smith has posted some of the anonymous emails that gave birth to the Syaed Ali affair last summer:

These emails surfaced shortly after a shadowy political organization loosely affiliated with Steve Pigeon and Responsible New York called Mothers and Fathers Demanding Answers launched a scandalous and anonymous campaign targeting one of Pigeon’s longtime adversaries, State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt.  At the time, it seemed as if the internecine squabbling between various forces in the Democratic Party had reached an all-time fever pitch.  After Joe Illuzzi published emails between Assemblyman Hoyt and an intern, all hell broke loose on the media front.  No one was sure as to the veracity of WNY First’s claims, nor did anyone know who sent the messages.

Have a look and see if you agree, as I do, with Smith’s conclusions:

The content of these emails is so outrageous that no one in their right mind would have believed their accuracy.  They were so libelous as to be self-parodies.  We don’t know how it is that Ali allegedly got himself caught up in this mess, or whether he sent these emails.  We can tell you that this is the material that so pissed off Buffalo City Hall and Mayor Byron Brown that they allegedly took Ali and treated him in a way more appropriate for a third world banana republic than the second-largest city in the state of New York.

Two things:

1. What City Hall and law enforcement are alleged to have done to Ali is wrong and actionable.
2. Whoever wrote these emails is, at worst, liable for defamation. I can’t imagine what crime has allegedly been committed.

Since Mike Beebe has done such a nice job picking up the Syaed Ali story for the News—even acknowledging AV’s reporting, for which I thank Mike and the editors who didn’t strike the reference—I’m going to take the day off and instead complain about a problem of my own.

I live on a short, narrow street on the West Side that sees a plow about once a month. I have to traverse similar streets to get out of the cat’s cradle of one-way streets that comprise my neighborhood.

In the last two months, snow and ice have ripped a whole in my muffler and played hell with my transmission. I blame both problems, which I will soon pay plenty to have fixed, on the city’s poor job this year of clearing the streets.

On Friday, right after work, I parked on a very slick and mucky Elmwood Avenue to visit my bank; when I came out, I found someone had sideswiped my car. The damage isn’t too serious, though it surely will prove to be expensive: I can barely open the driver’s door.

There was no note, but that’s fuel for another fire. Absent the driver of the car who slid into my car, I’d like to focus on that part of the blame that fixes on the road conditions. Elmwood Avenue at 5pm on Friday was a wreck. How can that be?

Any lawyer out there who thinks I have a claim against the city, feel free to call. Anyone who wants to join in the suit, there’s plenty of room.

Last night Channel 7 News reported that Syaed Ali was detained, his house searched, and his possessions confiscated back in November because Mayor Byron Brown’s security team believed he posed a threat to the safety of the mayor and his family:

It was November of last year when Buffalo Police executed a search warrant at a home on Breckenridge Street. The man who lived there is Syaed Ali. He was detained and his computer, cell phone, and personal documents were taken.

It’s been months and now police are starting to open up and say why. “Let’s just say that there are some safety concerns regarding the mayor and his family,” said police spokesperson Mike DeGeorge.

Those safety concerns were detected by the mayor’s personal security detail and considered then and now to be very serious. “It was their professional opinion that this was potentially serious enough that they forwarded it to the Buffalo Police Department. The police department has taken it and they have been investigating the matter ever since,” said DeGeorge.

Back in January Ali told Eyewitness News he did nothing wrong, and believed the move by the police was a directed from Mayor Byron Brown because of a political dispute. “They said because he made the mayor really mad,” said Ali on January 17th.

It’s been months and Ali has not yet been charged. He has filed a claim against the City of Buffalo to get his belongings back. “I want my stuff back, and all the materials back. I want these people to go away,” said Ali in January.

But that might not happen. Police tell Eye Witness News Ali could soon be facing aggravated harassment and criminal impersonation charges. They have also sought the help of outside agencies and may seek federal charges. “Could charges be upgraded, could they be elevated depending on where the investigation goes, I think that’s possible,” said DeGeorge.

Buffalo Police also tell Eyewitness News they are investigating a separate incident involving the safety of Deputy Mayor Donna Brown.

That’s more than Buffalo Police have been willing to say so far: Up until now, the line has been that the BPD will not comment on ongoing investigations—but apparently that’s not a hard and fast rule.

As long as they’re opening up, I have some questions, and here’s a half dozen of them:

1. If Ali threatened the mayor, why is the charge looming over him misdemeanor aggravated harassment?

2. We’ve talked to both the FBI and the New York Dtate Attorney General’s office, and my impression is that Buffalo Police are not going to get any help on this case from those quarters. Maybe I’m wrong, but a representative of the NYSAG’s office told me yesterday about 12 times, “It’s not our case. It’s all Buffalo Police.” So with what outside agencies is the BPD working?

3. If the mayor’s security detail had enough information about a threat to believe it was creidble and to pinpoint the source of the threat, why didn’t they get an arrest warrant for Ali?

4. If Ali is guilty of sending harassing emails to the mayor—Ali denies that, of course—that still doesn’t explain why he was detained without being arrested, allegedly told he would be arrested if he asked to speak to a lawyer or a relative, and then allegedly told to shut up about the whole incident when he was released or face arrest and criminal charges. And it doesn’t explain why the BPD still has the possessions they confiscated—not just computer equipment, Ali says, but business records, checkbooks, credit cards, cash, deodorant—three months later.

5. A lot of the stuff that Ali says was taken from his house is not covered by the warrant requested by Buffalo Police Detective Anna Mydlarz and signed by City Court Judge Craig Hannah. And the warrant cited the wrong statute (though not by much‚ off by one section). Is that grounds for suppression? What evidence did police garner from that search?

6. Ali has said police asked him to confess that South District Councilmember Mickey Kearns, who is running against Brown for mayor this year, and State Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, with whom Brown has been feuding for the past four years, put him up to circulating salacious rumors about the mayor via anonymous email last summer.And that in retaliation the mayor seems to have sicced Buffalo Police on him to give him a good scare.

Let’s say that all of that is true. (I’m not saying I think it is all true, but for the sake of argument…) Let’s imagine there’s not a single fucking sympathetic character in this sordid tale. Doesn’t this then seem like a case of slander and bullying typical of Buffalo’s high-school playground politics, but escalated until it’s out of control?

It’s as if some kids playing with matches and gasoline accidentally set fire to the garage. Those damned kids are a threat to themselves.

Anyway, Ali is coming by here in about 15 minutes, so I’ll follow up with his comments.

It’s been two weeks since I first wrote about Syaed Ali and a week since I followed up. (Last November Ali detained and interrogated while Buffalo police searched his home and confiscated his possessions—all because he was suspected of harassing Mayor Byron Brown.) The story has since been picked up by other news outlets, but the mayor’s office remains mum: Brown won’t even admit that Ali is accused of harassing him, though Ali insists that’s what his interrogators told him. Buffalo Police won’t say whether or not they’re investigating Ali.

City Court Judge Craig Hannah—an old friend of Byron Brown whom the mayor appointed to the bench just 11 days after taking office in 2006—won’t admit he signed the search warrant that Buffalo Police presented when they ransacked Ali’s house on November 7. But here is a copy of that warrant, and that appears to be Hannah’s signature at the bottom.

On the last page of that document is a makeshift receipt given to Ali’s family by Buffalo Police Detective Anna Mydlarz, who led the raid on Ali’s house and is supposedly in charge of the investigation that Buffalo Police won’t acknowledge. After the jump is a much longer list of items that Ali says Buffalo Police actually took from his home on November 7. It’s coming up on three months, and none of the items have been returned. Nor has Ali been charged with a crime.

Because no one will comment on this case, I have yet to receive answers to these questions:

1. Why bother with a search warrant for a misdemeanor harassment charge? What were police looking for?

2. On what basis was Ali suspected of harassing the mayor? Where is the evidence on which Hannah agreed to sign the search warrant?

3. Even if Ali had done what he is accused of doing—spreading prurient rumors about the mayor’s personal life—does that constitute harassment? Does that justify sending Buffalo Police into his family’s home with what is apparently a flimsy warrant to seize his propoerty and his person?

More on this soon.

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After the jump you can read the text of the notice of complaint Syaed Ali’s lawyers filed on December 10.

But before you do: I like to give credit to the Buffalo News when a story therein inspires me to write something, so let me give a nod to Brian Meyer’s piece in today’s local section on the Syaed Ali case: His piece inspired me to be aggravated again that News reporters never credit other news outlets (or at least not AV) when they use our reporting. We published this story online a week ago and in print yesterday.

It’s utterly graceless and petty, whether it comes from the reporters or the editors.

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