Vanity Fair Sheds Little New Light on Rattner Case

The September issue of Vanity Fair hit newsstands today, with a 9-page article detailing the rise and (partial) fall of Steven Rattner.

It’s a great read for those who don’t know much about Rattner, or how he is alleged to have participated in a pay-to-play scheme involving private equity firms and the New York state pension fund. But for those of us who have followed the situation for more than a year, the only piece of new information was that Rattner “pleaded the Fifth Amendment to many of the questions [SEC] lawyers asked him” during a 2009 deposition.

Rattner himself declined to be interviewed for the article, as he has done for all other requests that would involve questions about the New York situation. He did, however, apparently ask Vanity Fair to assign a different writer to the story (which the magazine, thankfully, did not do).

As such, the sad saga just continues to drag on. Rattner has refused to settle for more than a year — despite the pleadings of his former partners at private equity firm Quadrangle Group, which finally struck its own deal with Cuomo and the SEC in April. Cuomo refuses to indict, perhaps due to an immunity deal reached before a bunch of potentially incriminating emails were discovered. I was hoping that Vanity Fair would shed some light on possible the possible end game, but it didn’t happen.

Well, at least we’ll always have Chooch… Or, if you like Fifth Amendment humor (and who doesn’t), take a look at the following clip (fast forward to 4:50):