Andrew Cuomo Grants Clemency to Former Weather Underground Militant, Father of San Francisco DA

Disgraced former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo used his last hours in office Monday to grant clemency to several convicts, including a former member of the Weather Underground who is the father of San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin.

As the New York Times reported Monday, Cuomo granted clemency to David Gilbert, 75, for his role in what became known as the “Brink’s heist,” an effort to steal millions of dollars to fund the activities of radical left-wing organizations.

The Times reported:

David Gilbert is serving a 75-years-to-life sentence for his role in the crime as a member of the Weather Underground, which stole $1.6 million in cash from the armored car outside the Nanuet Mall near Nyack, N.Y.

The decision does not mean he will automatically be released from prison. Mr. Gilbert will be granted a parole hearing in the weeks to come, according to Monday’s announcement.

…

Killed in the robbery were Sgt. Edward O’Grady, Officer Waverly Brown and Peter Paige, a Brink’s guard. The commutation of Mr. Gilbert’s sentence, like Ms. Clark’s before him, outraged the law enforcement community in Rockland County.

“It’s absurd,” Arthur Keenan Jr., a retired detective with the Nyack Police Department, who was wounded in the shootout, said on Monday. He said Mr. Cuomo “is stabbing all of law enforcement in the back, and when I say all, I’m talking about federal, state, local — all across the whole country — because he’s a traitor.”

Gilbert’s son, Chesa Boudin, is a proponent of “criminal justice reform” who has backed off the prosecution of petty crime in San Francisco, and faces a possible recall. He enjoys the support of other left-wing prosecutors, such as the George Soros-baced district attorney of Los Angeles County, George Gascón, who is also facing a recall effort of his own.

Boudin pushed for clemency for his father, and welcomed Cuomo’s decision, the San Francisco Chronicle noted:

“On the eve of my first child’s birth, my father, David Gilbert, has been granted clemency,” Boudin said in an email to The Associated Press. “Although he never used a gun or intended for anyone to get hurt, my father’s crime caused unspeakable harm and devastated the lives of many separate families. I will continue to keep those families in my heart.”

In 2016, Cuomo also commuted the sentence Judith Clark, another participant in the Brink’s heist, who was later paroled.

One of the survivors of the robbery, Brinks guard Francis Joseph Trombino, continued working for the company and later survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, before being killed in the 9/11 terror attacks on the same building.

Cuomo resigned from office following accusations of sexual harassment by several women, which he continues to deny.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.