By Rebecca Henely
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Astoria) said Shashank Tripathi, the former campaign manager for her Republican opponent Christopher Wight, should be punished for the false tweets he made during Hurricane Sandy.
“It’s just unfortunate that someone could do something that would be harmful to the recovery effort,” Maloney said.
The congresswoman beat Wight with 81 percent of the vote, according to unofficial election results from New York 1.
Under the handle “ComfortablySmug,” Tripathi wrote tweets while Superstorm Sandy was blowing through Queens and other parts of the Northeast, saying Consolidated Edison was going to shut down and later had cut off all electrical power in Manhattan in advance of the storm surge.
While Con Edison did kill power to Lower Manhattan and other outages occurred in the area, most of the borough north of 34th Street kept lights on.
On Oct. 29, Tripathi also wrote that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was under 3 feet of water, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had been trapped in Manhattan and taken to a secure shelter and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority would close all subways for a week.
All of these statements were untrue, but some reached major media outlets, such as CNN and The Weather Channel, which reported them.
“While some would use the anonymity and instant feedback of social media as an excuse, I take full responsibility for my actions,” Tripathi said on Twitter Oct. 30. “I deeply regret any distress or harm they may have caused.”
Wight had chastised Tripathi, who resigned last week.
“I had no indication that he was capable of the type of behavior he exhibited,” Wight said.
City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Astoria), who has called for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to prosecute Tripathi, said he thought Tripathi could be guilty of a misdemeanor charge for his actions.
Vallone said he did not expect the former aide to be hit with criminal charges anytime soon as the DA’s office was still recovering from the hurricane, but Vallone believed Tripathi could be prosecuted under a part of state penal law 240.50, against falsely reporting an incident. The section in part makes it a misdemeanor to circulate a false report of a “crime, catastrophe or an emergency” that could result in “public alarm or inconvenience.”
“I think in this situation that law may very well apply,” Vallone said.
The councilman said those who would say Tripathi’s tweets should not have been trusted point blank because they were written on Twitter did not understand the value of distributing important facts through social media in a time of crisis.
“Social media was very, very helpful during the hurricane,” he said. “A lot of people got good information from it.”
Tripathi said on Twitter he hoped the voters would not judge Wight for his actions. He did not offer any explanation for why he made the false tweets.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
