De Blasio’s damning silence

M

ayor de Blasio just devoted three days of the dwindling number left before Election Day to a disturbingly evasive defense of his dealings with a major political donor. In an ongoing federal corruption trial of former corrections union chief Norman Seabrook, Jona Rechnitz testified last week that his huge cash contributions yielded ready, steady access to City Hall, encouraged by de Blasio with a jot of his cellphone number on the back of a business card.

Let the tap dance begin — and listen to what de Blasio didn’t say.

Saturday: de Blasio dismissed Jona Rechnitz as “a liar and a felon.”

What he didn’t do was dispute specifics of Rechnitz’ sworn claim that he and the mayor talked “at least once a week,” or that he got his hand held when he had a problem to fix.

Sunday: De Blasio shrugged at Rechnitz’s recollection that de Blasio personally called him to request a $102,300 maximum donation to the Democratic State Senate campaign committee after a fundraiser’s entreaties failed to yield the cash.

“I don’t recall if I talked to him directly about that,” de Blasio told reporters. Not “I never said that” — big difference. Monday: After Rechnitz told the jury he paid a Dominican Republic hotel bill for Ross Offinger, Hizzoner’s fundraiser, a mayoral spokesman averred that de Blasio “wasn’t aware of it and certainly would not have approved of it.”

Strange. De Blasio swelled with absolute certainty when federal prosecutors in April 2016 served Offinger and other de Blasio associates with subpoenas, asserting, as he has said umpteen times: “Everything we did was legal and appropriate.” Depends, perhaps, on the definition of “did.”