Blaz: La la, not worried about growing scandal
SCANDAL? What scandal?
A dismissive Mayor de Blasio Wednesday mocked concern about his team covering up crucial documents in a probe of his administration.
Then he canceled a Daily News interview and refused to answer questions about the investigation of a Lower East Side nursing home sale.
“This is probably bigger than Watergate,” he joked when asked about a Department of Investigation probe of how the city handled a deed restriction waiver that allowed a Rivington St. nursing home to become luxury condos.
On Tuesday, the Investigation Department released evidence showing that city Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter withheld internal memos he deemed “not relevant.”
One showed a top de Blasio aide knew early on about the condo possibilities, while a second detailed a second deed restriction waiver request in Harlem.
Carter also refused investigators’ access to the hard drive of the computers serving the mayor and his top aides.
On Friday, Carter backed down and released 5,000 pages of unredacted documents, then on Tuesday he agreed to provide investigators unfettered access to the mayor’s computers.
By Wednesday, de Blasio — in Philadelphia, where he spoke at the Democratic National Convention — was downplaying evidence of a coverup and dodging questions about it.
The mayor, speaking at a Politico breakfast panel discussion, called headlines about the scandal “so overheated and off the mark.”
The mayor would only say that Carter finally decided to hand over the info to DOI after “dialogue” within the administration. And he predicted the new documents wouldn’t change anything.
“It’s all going to show the exact same thing at the end, that things were handled appropriately,” he said.
After the breakfast panel, de Blasio refused to take more questions on the Rivington St. controversy.
Last week de Blasio sought an interview with The News during the DNC convention with no restrictions.
By Tuesday his handlers said he wouldn’t answer questions about the nursing home deal.
On Wednesday, he canceled the sitdown, citing a scheduling conflict and said they would try to reschedule for Thursday with the same restrictions.
Though Carter has said all the documents held back were not relevant to the Rivington St. inquiry, de Blasio has yet to weigh in on several questions submitted by The News.
“The mayor is standing firmly behind Zack’s handling of this,” Eric Phillips said without addressing de Blasio’s opinion of the withholding of the specific documents.
In the deal, the buyer bought the Rivington St. nursing home from a nonprofit group for $28 million, paid the city $16 million to remove a deed restriction, and sold it for $116 million to a condo developer. Questions the Daily News would like Mayor de Blasio to answer about the Rivington St. deed waiver: Does the mayor support Carter’s holding back from DOI the internal memo spelling out early on that the nursing home owners were considering selling it to condo builders — something de Blasio has claimed he knew nothing about? •Does the mayor support Carter whiting out as “Not Relevant” a section of a memo detailing the other deed restriction waiver in Harlem? •Does the mayor see any conflict of interest with Carter acting as gatekeeper for documents when his agency, the Department of Law, was consulted during the city’s decision to waive the Rivington St. deed restriction?