It Was Probably The Stealing From The Little League That Did It

What happens to union leaders and elected officials who run afoul of the law and lose their power? They’re forced to get a real job:

Disgraced former Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin returned to work last week. He is an electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 working at a construction site on Manhattan’s West Side.

He’s also awaiting trial on a 186-page federal indictment that charges him with 43 counts of racketeering and corruption. McLaughlin, a former Queens Assemblyman and once New York’s top labor leader, is accused of defrauding the union, receiving bribes and embezzling funds from a number of sources, including a Queens Little League. He pleaded not guilty in October and is out on $250,000 bail.

The pre-trial hearing was scheduled for June 14 in United States District Court Southern District of New York. Numerous calls to the case manager for presiding judge Kenneth Karas to retrieve results of the hearing went unreturned.

McLaughlin was president of the New York City Central Labor Council, the country’s largest municipal labor council. He has not been active in that capacity since August 2006 when he was forced to take an unpaid leave of absence and was subsequently indicted under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.