In the wake of her retirement announcement on Monday, New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore is currently the subject of a state ethics investigation.
The investigation is looking at whether Dennis Quirk, the president of the New York State Court Officers Association, was disciplined because of the interference of married DiFiore, 66.
After being accused of writing a letter to DiFiore threatening to publish copies of a newspaper article about an alleged affair, Quirk, a vocal opponent of the judge, was punished.
When she was a prosecutor in 2013 and allegedly cheated on her husband Dennis Glazer, she was suspected of having an affair with a police officer.
The judge wrote to the hearing officer demanding that he be disciplined, and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct is looking into whether this was an improper interference in the judge’s disciplinary proceeding.
A complaint regarding the union leader’s alleged behavior against Black court employees led Judge DiFiore to seek a “independent investigation of the New York State court system’s response to concerns of institutional racism,” according to the New York Post article that prompted Quirk’s disciplinary hearing.
DiFiore allegedly informed Phyllis Orlikoff Flug, the hearing officer in the case, in a letter dated August 2021 that Quirk “exhibits no remorse” for what he did.
“You must use every tool at your disposal to address this issue and prevent respondent from engaging in wrongdoing in the future,” she continued.
I beg you to wisely exercise your power in order to protect the standards of our whole judicial system.
Flug told Law360 that shortly after receiving the letter, she forwarded it to the Commission on Judicial Conduct.
The retired judge asserts that she spoke with the commission’s head counsel, Robert Tembeckjian, directly and that he assured her that an investigation would be conducted.
Judge DiFiore was under investigation when she announced her resignation, a person familiar with the probe told Law360.
DiFiore was appointed to the bench in 2016 by disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo, with whom he had a strong relationship.
“She should know better as a judge,” quirk remarked.
After the independent review was started, the 73-year-old sent Judge DiFiore, who has three children with her husband, an email.
According to documents in a related argument in state court about whether Judge DiFiore should testify in the disciplinary case, he made a suggestion that he would respond to the propagation of “false tales.”
‘Lets [sic] see [how] you enjoy the web stories about your relationship with a police officer with ties to organized crime while you were married put all over every Court Building in NYS,’ he allegedly said, according to court filings.
Following that, the email was forwarded for possible disciplinary action.
After the judge issued a required vaccination order in August, he further supported his “doxxing” of her by publishing the addresses of her estates in the Hamptons and Westchester online.
Following the Facebook posts, which also revealed the Southampton address of her vacation house, Quirk was suspended for 30 days without pay and was also required to surrender his firearms.
When contacted by DailyMail.com, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct declined to comment.
Despite the state court’s denial that Judge DiFiore’s resignation had anything to do with the lawsuit, she did not provide a particular explanation for her decision to step down on Monday.
It is time for me to move on to the next chapter in my professional life, she remarked when announcing her resignation.
Anybody can register a complaint with the Conduct Commission, regardless of validity, and it will be taken into consideration, according to a statement from state court spokesman Lucian Chalfen.
Dennis Quirk’s complaint is one of several that are frequently submitted.
In this day and age, that is just a part of the job. The announcement by Chief Judge DiFiore, which she has been contemplating for months, has nothing to do with Quirk’s complaint or any other outside causes.