The mayor took the call, which right there blows the walls off his claim that he didn’t really know Jona Rechnitz.
Nor did he, as best we can tell, bristle at Rechnitz’s request (“I haven’t asked for much”) to name NYPD Chief of Department Joe Esposito as the next head of the Office of Emergency Management. No, Mayor de Blasio soon gave Esposito the job.
Rechnitz had given big to de Blasio’s campaign, to his inaugural fund and more. He’d keep giving — the mayor wanted donations to his drive to turn the state Senate Democratic — after he got what he asked.
And he told associates, “I’ve got the mayor on lockdown” — which it sure seems he did.
Rechnitz apparently made the call on his cell from the office of then-Chief of Department Phillip Banks III — on speaker, so Banks and then-Deputy Chief Michael Harrington, as well as Jeremy Reichberg (a Rechnitz crony who also gave to de Blasio Inc.) could listen in.
Esposito looks clean, unlike everyone else in this sordid affair — a straight shooter who testified in court in support of the stop-and-frisk policies that de Blasio made his political bones attacking.
Who wanted the good cop moved out of the way, and why? Maybe US Attorney Preet Bharara’s figured it out; expect to learn more from the indictments, when and if they roll down.
Banks hasn’t been charged in any crime. But he quit, rather than accept a promotion to No. 3 in the department, about a year later — apparently because he’d learned the feds were looking into the hundreds of grand that mysteriously had popped into his bank accounts, and his ties to Rechnitz and Reichberg.
Everyone else in that room does face charges, on bribery as it happens — with Rechnitz, at least, turning state’s evidence.
As for de Blasio, well: After Rechnitz and Reichberg’s arrest, he said, “I know of no favorable municipal action they got.”
Maybe today’s Post will refresh your memory, Mr. Mayor.