It took 18 months and a federal corruption conviction for Mayor de Blasio to finally declare former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver a crook.
The mayor told WABC radio host Rita Cosby that “justice was served” in the prison sentences meted out to Silver and former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.
“The public has every right to be outraged,” he said.
“We all have a mission to run a clean, ethical government . . . When people line their own pockets, it’s very important to the public that there’s a real outcome and justice is done,” said the mayor, who is now facing a criminal investigation of his own.
But when the charges against Silver first surfaced in January 2015, de Blasio vouched for Sheldon’s honesty.
“Although the charges announced today certainly are very serious, I want to note that I’ve always known Shelly Silver to be a man of integrity,” the mayor said last year.
Meanwhile, Silver on Friday asked the court for more time to cough up the $7 million-plus the government has ordered him to fork over for abusing his power.
The payments would “impose irreparable harm and needless hardship on Mr. Silver and his wife” and force them to sell their two homes, his lawyers griped to a Manhattan federal judge.