Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) provided part time jobs in his congressional office to both his fiancée’s daughter and his mistress, a New York Times report reveals.
The arrangement is a possible violation of House ethics rules crafted to combat corruption in the notoriously shady world of congressional staffing.
The Times reports:
Shortly after taking the oath of office, the first-term congressman hired his longtime fiancée’s daughter to work as a special assistant in his district office, eventually bumping her salary to about $3,800 a month, payroll records show.
In April, Mr. D’Esposito added someone even closer to him to his payroll: a woman with whom he was having an affair, according to four people familiar with the relationship. The woman, Devin Faas, collected $2,000 a month for a part-time job in the same district office.
Each working arrangement ended abruptly in July 2023, coinciding with D’Esposito’s fiancée, Cynthia Lark, learning about his relationship with Faas.
Despite dating Faas, 38, D’Esposito lived with Lark, with whom he had been engaged since around 2010 and whose daughter, Tessa Lark, he also hired onto his congressional staff.
D’Esposito, 42, began introducing Lark, 61, as his fiancé around that time, spending vacations and holidays with her and moving into her Tudor-style home, the Times reports.
Yet beginning in around 2021, D’Esposito and Faas carried on an affair which ended Faas’s marriage with now-ex-husband Derek Ciaschi.
Ciaschi, who has three children with Faas, confirmed to the Times that the affair ended their marriage.
Faas first appeared on the House payroll just weeks after her divorce from Ciaschi was finalized. During her brief employment for D’Esposito’s congressional office, she continued to work full time for the Town of Hempstead.
The House official code of conduct prohibits members of Congress from hiring family members, including stepchildren. Yet because D’Esposito and Lark never married, D’Esposito’s hiring of Tessa Lark after dating her mother for a decade or more might not officially violate the rules.
Tessa Lark is registered to vote at the home shared by her mother and D’Esposito.
D’Esposito might not have a loophole to slip through with his hiring of Faas. The House code of conduct prohibits any member of Congress from engaging in a sexual relation with an employee.
Faas’s employment raises other concerns, with the Times claiming four former House employees familiar with the office said they never encountered her working for the congressman.
According to the Times, “Experts said the circumstances could also prompt an investigation into whether either position had broken a ban on no-show or low-show jobs, potentially exposing Mr. D’Esposito, a former police detective, to additional scrutiny by the House and law enforcement officials.”
The Congressman ignored multiple questions from reporters Monday, appearing to engage in a phone conversation while leaving the Capitol, although he did acknowledge he believes the attack is politically motivated.
“Probably Cap Grille,” the Congressman said into the phone, apparently referring to the swanky Capitol Grille, a hotspot for lobbyists to wine and dine members of Congress.
Tuesday morning D’Esposito released a statement dismissing the reports but refusing to dispute their substance, arguing his personal life has not interfered with his ability to do his job.
“The latest political tabloid garbage being peddled by The New York Times is nothing more than a slimy, partisan ‘hit piece’ designed to distract Long Islanders from Democrats’ failing record on border security, the economy, and foreign policy,” he said. “My personal life has never interfered with my ability to deliver results for New York’s 4th district, and I have upheld the highest ethical standards of personal conduct. Voters deserve better than the Times’ gutter politics.”
D’Esposito, whose father was a close ally of former Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (R-NY), has a long history of benefiting from the notorious local political machine of Nassau County and its powerful political patronage. As the Times reports, “Every member of his immediate family has held a town or county job, and as a local official, he routinely helped friends find spots on the government payroll.”
After taking office for the first time in 2016 when party leaders appointed him to a vacancy on the Hempstead town council, D’Esposito quickly began climbing the political ladder. In 2018 he added a second title, administrative assistant for the Nassau County Board of Elections, which provided a $100,000 salary.
According to the Times:
He used his council office to benefit family, voting in 2017 to amend the town’s labor contract to protect employees, including three relatives, from termination after Ms. Gillen became the first Democrat to be elected supervisor in more than a century. A state judge said Mr. D’Esposito should have recused himself, and not doing so violated the “spirit and intent” of the town ethics code. He faced no punishment.
His willingness to help was not limited to blood relatives. Around 2017, Mr. D’Esposito pushed his connections to secure a position for his longtime fiancée, Cynthia Lark, in one of the town’s villages, East Rockaway, according to an associate of Mr. D’Esposito with direct knowledge of the matter. He also helped Ms. Lark’s son get a job with the East Rockaway sanitation department.
In October 2023, D’Esposito opposed the House Republican Conference’s nominee for Speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) — perhaps the most nationally popular conservative in Washington. D’Esposito and other holdouts prolonged a speakership vacancy which ultimately resulted in an extension of spending levels and policies authored in the 2022 lame duck period by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Yet the news isn’t all bad for D’Esposito. The Times says D’Esposito and Lark, with whom he lives, reconciled after Lark’s employment with his office ended.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.