The Mayor, the Rat, & the NYPD

Judicial Watch: The Christmas season in New York City truly is a wonderful time. Everyone seems caught up in the spirit of giving, even the crooks. This year, Christmas brought a special gift: the denouement of the long-running saga of the mayor, the rat, and the NYPD. Once, in an only-in-New-York moment, the rat and a key co-conspirator, both Orthodox Jews, dressed as Santa’s elves and delivered pricey gifts to police officials at the center of a corruption scheme. Then there was the time they flew an NYPD deputy inspector and a detective to Vegas in a private jet with a hooker for Super Bowl weekend. And the time the rat shoved $60,000 in a Ferragamo handbag to pay off a union boss. They showered cash on public officials. They bought their police friends jewelry, cigars, and meals at pricey restaurants. They paid for trips to Rome and Israel and the Dominican Republic.

In return, the NYPD did favors for the rat, Jona Rechnitz, and co-conspirator Jeremy Reichberg. In a midtown office, the New York Times reported, Rechnitz and Reichberg met with “people seeking help with police matters.” The men would later “split the profits” after the problems were resolved. Tickets were fixed, jury duty was avoided, problems with business rivals and city officials went away. Reichberg got a license to carry a gun. Rechnitz was provided with high-speed police escorts to the airport. Police closed a lane in the Lincoln Tunnel to whisk a Rechnitz business associate into Manhattan.

Cash was bestowed on Bill de Blasio’s political campaigns–a lot of it. “Love you brother,” wrote de Blasio in an email to Rechnitz the day after his 2014 inauguration as mayor. And why not? Rechnitz himself had been showing de Blasio a lot of love, bundling more than $41,000 for the mayor’s campaign. And there was a lot more to come. The New York Post reports that Rechnitz and his allies raised upward of $250,000 for entities linked to de Blasio.

Last week, Reichberg was convicted in federal court on four corruption charges. His former friend, Jona Rechnitz, testified against him. Rechnitz had begun cooperating with federal authorities in April 2016, after being implicated in a $12 million Ponzi scheme. In August, Rechnitz’s testimony sent another former friend, union boss Norman Seabrook, to prison for bribery and conspiracy.

It’s a mock epic of petty vanities and temptations and the erosion of values, of greed and corruption and the flouting of many laws by many people in positions of power. Alan Feuer tracked the sprawling saga for the New York Times in April, detailing a “Dickensian cast of characters” connected in an “intersecting web of venality and vice.” Bill de Blasio shows up frequently but was charged with no wrongdoing. Lucky him.  MORE