If Times Square could be cleaned up, why not Albany.
That was Preet Bharara’s message Friday at a Fordham Law School forum on fighting public corruption.
The crusading Manhattan US attorney said he’s more “optimistic” than ever about his chances of weeding public corruption out of state politics.
He cited many letters and other forms of support his office has received — both offering assistance and thanking him for a laundry list of convictions he secured against crooked politicians.
And Bharara even cited a physics principle by the Ancient Greek scholar Archimedes to help prove his point that “even seemingly immovable objects” such as political corruption “can be moved.”
“Archimedes said to move Earth itself, all he needed was a long enough lever and a place to stand,” Bharara said. “To put it blunter in New York terms: If we could clean up Times Square, can we really not clean up Albany? Just give people a long enough lever and a place to stand.”
Bharara, who is probing Gov. Cuomo’s administration and secured an indictment against former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, said he hopes lawmakers will think twice about doing anything illegal.