Drug ‘store’ shut down
DISGRACED EX-MAYORAL candidate Anthony Weiner was hit with nearly $65,000 in fines Thursday for misusing campaign cash — including using it to pay for his personal phone.
The city Campaign Finance Board voted unanimously to penalize the serial sexter’s failed 2013 campaign for 10 different violations of campaign finance law.
The campaign will also have to repay $195,000 in taxpayer matching funds it did not use.
The board said Weiner’s campaign spent $1,539 on bills for two phones and dry cleaning that it found were really Weiner’s personal expenses.
The campaign said one of the phones was Weiner’s personal line, which he used for fund-raising, and the other was a phone bought during his earlier mayoral bid in 2005. The board whacked him with a $2,308 fine for that, since using campaign donations for regular living expenses is not allowed.
Weiner also was socked with another $22,000 fine for failing to demonstrate expenses were in furtherance of his campaign, including $26,000 paid to the political fund-raising firm the Esler Group, $56,210 to people whose duties were not properly documented, and $600 for TVs.
Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign, after initially surging to the top of the polls, imploded after it emerged that he had continued sexting with women after resigning from Congress for doing the same thing.
He’s now the subject of a federal investigation over exchanges with a teen girl in North Carolina. His wife, top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, finally left him after revelations that he had sent another woman a picture that showed their young son in bed with him.
It’s unclear whether the phone he paid for with campaign money was used in any explicit exchanges.
A source close to the campaign said that since Weiner was using his personal phone to ask for contributions and talk to reporters about the campaign, they believe the law allows it to be counted as a campaign expense.
He was also accused of accepting 21 campaign contributions over the legal limit of $4,950, accepting two contributions over the lower limit for people who have business with the city, and taking two illicit gifts from corporations.
And the campaign spent $115,000 after the election was over, including $46,000 to a consultant, spending that was judged improper because proper contracts were not provided. Weiner declined to comment. The former pol is required to pay the fine out of pocket if he doesn’t have enough campaign funds to cover it. A CITY COUNCIL bill to remake parts of the city’s strict campaign finance rules will eliminate safeguards that have helped authorities catch pols ripping off taxpayers, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. charged. The bill, which could pass as early as next week, would allow candidates for office to “correct” or “complete” contribution cards donors are required to fill out. Those cards are required for cash donations and money orders, and must be submitted to the Campaign Finance Board in order to recieve public money. Allowing the candidates to fill out the forms themselves would make it much easier to forge or alter cards to try and get public funds they aren’t eligible for, Vance said in a letter to the Council. “If this bill were to pass, it would become extraordinarily difficult for such conduct to be detected,” he wrote. City Councilman David Greenfield said he would talk to Vance to try and eliminate the potential for fraud. COPS TOOK down 13 gang members — including a father-and-son duo — in Washington Heights who allegedly ran an open-air drug market during the evening rush hour, officials said Thursday.
The “Six Block” gang members sold painkillers, coke and marijuana from 160th to 167th Sts. and between Broadway and Fort Washington Ave.
Starting Wednesday night and extending into Thursday morning, cops with the Manhattan North gang squad tracked down and cuffed the gang members. The crew has ties to the Trinitarios, a notorious street and prison gang mostly made up of members of Dominican descent.
One of the dealers, Nolan Munoz, brought a child along for a number of the sales, officials said.