Mayor Bill de Blasio bristled Wednesday when asked about newly revealed emails that shed fresh light on his cozy relationship with a crooked campaign contributor — angrily declaring that “I’m at my limit” for questions about the scandal.
During an unrelated press conference in Manhattan, de Blasio wouldn’t say why nearly two dozen emails he sent Jona Rechnitz — which were obtained exclusively by The Post — were never released by City Hall in response to requests by multiple news organizations under the Freedom of Information Law.
“I want to be clear with you and with all your colleagues on anything backward-looking, that I’m at my limit at this point,” the mayor seethed at a Post reporter.
“We’ve talked about this for two years, I’m really not going to talk about the past any longer. I think it’s been covered and covered again, and looked at, so I have nothing else to say on what happened before.”
De Blasio did say that “we will work on the new policy” for preserving emails that his press secretary announced Tuesday, in the wake of The Post’s expose.
“We need to do a better job of coming up with a clear policy,” de Blasio said.
“I think everyone in these last years has come to understand that the policies that existed previously were not sufficient, that the age of email has changed behavior profoundly and we need to address it.”
“I’ve said publicly, I’ll say it again, for a lot of us that has meant using email a lot less and trying consistently to tell people if it might be an official matter to move over to the official email. I think that’s the single best way to deal with it. But we need a more systematic strategy,” he added.
The emails obtained by The Post show that de Blasio told Rechnitz in 2013, “Call upon me anytime I can help,” and later instructed Rechnitz to only contact him by cellphone or Hizzoner’s personal email account.