A rattled Mayor Bill de Blasio abruptly cut short a press conference Monday after he struggled with questions about the snowballing scandals threatening his administration.
Hizzoner insisted his staff did not break fundraising laws and whined that he was a victim of politics — before dodging questions and scampering away from reporters after an event in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
“It’s outrageous,” the mayor said of allegations his team violated campaign finance laws. “And again, I don’t know what’s motivating it.”
De Blasio was speaking a day after his lawyer blasted the leak of a government document that alleged criminality in the mayor’s fundraising efforts.
The report was penned by Gov. Andrew Cuomo ally and state Board of Elections counsel Risa Sugarman, who said there were “willful and flagrant” violations of campaign finance laws by the mayor and his political team.
De Blasio’s lawyer Laurence Laufer said the leak was a political attack — but stopped short of saying who was behind it.
“I think he raised real concerns about whether that was the case,” de Blasio said, although he ducked when asked if he thought Cuomo was behind the leak.
The mayor then seemed to contradict himself when addressing a Post report that his administration knew about a real estate deal on the Lower East Side side that turned into a windfall investment for one of his backers.
“I don’t have any reason to believe that is accurate,” he said. “But again, a full investigation is going on, and when we see the whole total, then we’ll speak to it.”