NBC New York reports:

When it rains, it pours. And Gov. David Paterson can’t climb out of the mud.

New, separate allegations saddle Paterson as he struggles to extricate himself from the growing scandal surrounding a domestic-violence case against a former top aide. The New York State Commission on Public Integrity today charged the embattled governor with violating the gift ban of the state’s ethics laws when he secured free tickets to the first game of the 2009 World Series from the New York Yankees.

Paterson attended the game with his son, his son’s friend, his deputy director of state operations, and none other than David Johnson, the aide at the center of the mushrooming scandal consuming the governor’s office.

The mud just keeps getting thicker.

The Commission notified Paterson’s office in October 2009 that he may have violated state ethics laws in accepting the five free tickets, and the governor’s legal counsel, Peter Kiernan, responded that the governor went to the game in his official capacity and obtaining the other four tickets was legal because the Yankees immediately got reimbursed for them.

The Public Officers Law prohibits a State officer or employee, such as the governor, from directly or indirectly soliciting, accepting or receiving anything of more than nominal value if it is reasonable to infer that the gift was intended or could reasonably be expected to influence or reward him or her in the performance of his or her official duties.

The Commission asked the Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who’s already probing the assault-case scandal, and the Albany County District Attorney to investigate whether the governor or anyone else may have committed a crime by swearing falsely during the Commission’s interview of Paterson and by back-dating a check to make it appear the Yankees didn’t get reimbursed in an effort by the governor’s office to avoid litigation.

The Commission says there is reasonable cause to believe Paterson solicited, received and accepted an unlawful gift; and falsely testified under oath that he had always intended to pay for the tickets for his son and his son’s friend when, in fact, he had planned to get them for free until a press inquiry caused him to submit a backdated check as payment for the tickets.

(Source: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/)