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Nov 21

2025

Lawyer puts up $800k to deny party boss a Senate seat

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Attorney Peter Reese, a relentless pot-stirrer in Western New York politics for decades, is hell-bent on preventing Erie County Democratic Chair Jeremy Zellner from becoming a state senator. On Tuesday Reese filed paperwork with the state elections board to create an independent expenditure committee dedicated to derailing Zellner’s efforts to succeed Sean Ryan, Buffalo’s mayor-elect, in representing the 61st State Senate District.  He’s seeding the committee’s bank account with $800,000 of his own money.  “I figured a million would be too gaudy,” Reese told Investigative Post.  The committee is called ATAT, short for “Ainsi toujours aux tyrans,” Reese said. That’s[...]

Posted 2 days ago

Nov 20

2025

Niagara Falls mayor admits ‘ignoring’ media requests for info

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Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino. In his latest update from inside Niagara Falls City Hall, Mayor Robert Restaino once again donned his newspaper publisher’s cap to tell the Niagara Gazette what stories it should be printing and to tell residents his administration is not refusing the local news outlet’s requests for public information but is rather just ignoring them. Restaino, a former city court judge removed from the bench for misconduct, justified this flouting of state Freedom of Information law by citing his frustration with the newspaper’s choice of stories. In a message published on his office’s YouTube channel, Restaino accused[...]

Posted 3 days ago

Nov 19

2025

Across the state, discipline for police misconduct varies widely

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The Yates County Sheriff’s Office. Photo by Lauren Petracca for the New York Times. A teenage girl came forward in May 2023 with a horrifying complaint: Her adoptive father had been raping her since 2021, she told police officers in an interview at her school. After some of the assaults, according to a police report, he would give her soda, candy or blueberry iced tea. The abuse started when she was 13. The teen was removed from the home, and the case was assigned to Megan Morehouse, an investigator in the Yates County Sheriff’s Office who had met the girl[...]

Posted 4 days ago

Nov 18

2025

Deportee: “I shouldn’t have lost my fingers”

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The federal ICE detention center in Batavia. Photo by J. Dale Shoemaker. Military-style raids by U.S. immigration agents — many of them filmed and glossily produced for television and social media — have become a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s second term. Early raids involved the capture of nearly 600 migrants in New York, New Jersey and other states. The government released images of migrants in shackles, marching toward a military plane that would deport them. Chidi Nwagbo, 58, a Nigerian man who’d lived in the United States since 1988, saw those raids unfold in real time from his home[...]

Posted 5 days ago

Nov 17

2025

A MAGA dream team or nightmare?

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WKBW’s Michael Wooten reports that Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik has recruited what I consider a “rogues’ gallery” of Western New York Republican operatives to help run her campaign for governor next year.  Michael Kracker is chair of the Erie County GOP and a top aide to state Sen. Rob Ortt of Niagara County. He’s been named chairman of Stefanik’s campaign. Kracker most recently ran James Gardner’s bid for Buffalo mayor — a schizophrenic effort in which Gardner’s often intelligent discussions of policy were undermined by dark warnings against creeping socialism and rampant crime should Democrat Sean Ryan prevail. Ryan won[...]

Posted 6 days ago

Nov 14

2025

Investigative Post launches annual fundraising drive

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Good journalism doesn’t come cheap. Here at Investigative Post, the stories we publish are often weeks, sometimes months, in the making. That’s because we’re doing original reporting that involves complicated issues or topics that people in power want to hide from public view. Our work requires patience and persistence, and the financial support of the Western New York community. We don’t sell advertising or charge for access to our website or newsletters. Instead, as a nonprofit, we rely on donations from our readers who value our work and believe in the importance of independent reporting. We’re in the midst of[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Nov 13

2025

Bills custodian, a migrant, jailed by ICE

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For two months, a young Venezuelan woman who had been hired to clean the Buffalo Bills’ Highmark Stadium has been detained by ICE. The woman, Yusgleidy Villa Alvarez, 18, has no criminal history. Until September, she’d been a legal resident of the United States, was on the path to obtaining a green card and had been granted a work permit. Yet without warning, a federal lawsuit alleges, ICE agents arrested her after a shift Sept. 19, the day after the Bills beat the Miami Dolphins at Highmark Stadium. For more than a month, she was held at the Niagara County[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Nov 12

2025

Real estate firm settles housing discrimination lawsuit

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The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has settled a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a Western New York real estate agent accused of racial steering, a practice that violates local and federal fair housing laws. The organization accused Avant Realty founder Charles Glander of directing white homebuyers away from “unsafe” neighborhoods on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side, “a practice he did not apply for Black homebuyers,” according to a statement the Legal Defense Fund issued in January. The Legal Defense Fund — representing Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a nonprofit watchdog organization  — in April reached a settlement with Glander that[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago
Investigative Post