Cuomo's Two Takes on Corruption Probes: His and de Blasio's

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo fielded questions from reporters on Tuesday about a pair of investigations: one involving several of his upstate development projects, the other focused on Mayor de Blasio. The governor's views of the cases varied drastically.

Cuomo said it's nothing more than conspiracy thinking to suggest, as de Blasio has, that Cuomo jump-started the probe into whether the mayor broke campaign finance laws.

"It may all be a grand conspiracy against him," Cuomo said sarcastically, "but then the U.S. Attorney, the Attorney General of the State of New York, the Manhattan District Attorney are all part of a conspiracy."

Cuomo added that, in this case, multiple investigations mean prosecutors "genuinely believe there's an issue." That issue would be with irregularities in de Blasio's 2014 campaign to get Democrats elected to the state Senate.

But when Cuomo was asked about the federal corruption probe into a project of his called Buffalo Billion, he said just because there's a probe doesn't mean there’s wrongdoing. In this case, investigators are examining whether economic development funds were improperly channeled to nonprofits controlled by contributors to Cuomo. The governor said if misconduct did occur, it was probably just the fault of a few bad apples.

"People are venial," he said. "Some people have bad intent. Some people, frankly, are stupid. And things will happen."

The governor added he's conducting his own internal investigation into whether the operation of Buffalo Billion included fraudulent self-dealing by his former top aide, Joe Percoco, and Todd Howe, a lobbyist and close Cuomo family associate.