So the New York Times runs an op-ed piece that makes the novel argument that Bernie Madoff’s victims weren’t really victims because “no one was holding a gun to anyone’s head.” But it turns out that the author, writer Daphne Merkin, is the sister of Ezra Merkin, who was accused in a civil fraud complaint yesterday by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of steering billions of dollars of his client’s money to Madoff — without telling them.
By way of disclosure, Daphne Merkin merely wrote in the March 21 op-ed: I “have a sibling who did business with [Madoff].”
So we called up the Times to find out more about this. Public editor Clark Hoyt tells us he’s planning to address the issue in a column this weekend. As for Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, he declined to discuss the matter, telling our Zack Roth: “I answered this call against my better judgment. I thought you had something more substantive you wanted to talk about.”
Zack has the rest here.
