New York – New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio arrived to meet with federal prosecutors on Friday morning as part of their lengthy investigation into whether people involved in fundraising for his election campaign broke corruption laws, according to news reports.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
De Blasio, a Democrat who faces reelection in November, has repeatedly said he and his campaign staff did nothing wrong and that he was cooperating with prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in their yearlong criminal investigation.
“We did everything right,” he said in a television interview last month. “My team did everything right.”
A spokesman for the mayor did not respond to questions on Friday morning. The Spectrum News NY1 channel showed his black sport-utility vehicle swarmed by news photographers as it drove into a garage at his lawyer’s office in Manhattan shortly after 9 a.m. EST.
Prosecutors and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are expected to question him for about four hours at the office, according to the New York Times, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
Prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s public corruption unit are looking at whether people who helped raise money for de Blasio’s 2013 election campaign and a non-profit organization that his advisers operated received favorable treatment from the mayor or his aides at City Hall, according to news reports.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, which typically does not discuss ongoing investigations, declined to comment.
The mayor has no public events planned for the day and is due to travel later to Atlanta for a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, according to his published schedule.
Last month, de Blasio confirmed that he was interviewed by state-level prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a separate investigation into his fundraising practices. He is no longer a target of that inquiry, although some of his aides may still be under scrutiny, according to the New York Times.
The private law firms defending the mayor and other officials are costing the city more than $11.6 million, the paper reported.
de blasio is as innocent as Trump is with all his shenanigans to give money to Iran to kill Jews.