“We don’t know if she gave someone [at Weitz & Luxenberg or Thor Equities] a heads up,” Blakeman said. “We don’t know if she discussed what the contents of the subpoena would be. We don’t know if she discussed … that the commission was going out of business and not to worry because the subpoena would never be effective.”

Blakeman admitted that he knew of no evidence that Rice did any of these things.

“Nobody has any information, except Kathleen Rice,” Blakeman said. “This is information that she needs to share with the voters.”

Coleman Lamb, also a Rice campaign spokesman, said Blakeman’s statements had no basis.

Blakeman “makes a bunch of ‘we don't know if’ statements, and he provides absolutely no evidence to support anything that he’s saying, but we're supposed to provide evidence that what he’s saying isn’t true?” Lamb wrote in an email to the Herald. “Seems like the age-old fallacy known as an ‘argument from ignorance.’”

Cuomo’s executive order creating the Moreland Commission stated that its co-chairs had to vote unanimously to issue a subpoena, indicating that Rice approved subpoenaing Weitz & Luxenberg and Thor Equities even though the firms’ leaders donated to her campaigns, though it is not clear whether she may have recused herself from these votes. A copy of the Weitz & Luxenberg subpoena, available at www.documentcloud.org, a website that journalism nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. maintains, explicitly states that it was issued under Rice and her co-chairs’ authority. A copy of the Thor Equities subpoena was not readily available at press time.

At his Aug. 6 press conference, Blakeman also rebutted the Rice campaign’s assertion that she cannot discuss the commission’s workings while Bharara’s investigation is underway.

“She’s running for United States Congress,” Blakeman said. “She can’t just stonewall and continue to say ‘there’s an investigation pending, I can’t comment.’ She could do that if it was her investigation, but she and her work on the Moreland Commission is the target of the investigation, and she has an obligation to the voters to come clean and state exactly what her role was.”