Is he running for mayor — or godfather?
A top aide to embattled city Comptroller John Liu was caught using a classic Mafia term when she was secretly recorded by a Liu fund-raiser who was cooperating with the feds, court papers reveal.
Mei Hua Ru said Liu’s enemies “have taken aim at this thing of ours” during a 2011 phone call, according to the Manhattan federal court filing.
“This thing of ours” is a literal translation of the Italian words “La Cosa Nostra,” which refers to the organized-crime hierarchy that includes New York’s infamous “Five Families.”
The term was repeatedly mentioned on TV’s hit mob show “The Sopranos.”
Court papers say Ru, Liu’s 2009 campaign treasurer, was the subject of a “controlled call” from former Liu fund-raiser Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan, who at the time was trying to strike a deal with the feds after getting caught in a campaign-finance sting operation.
During the Oct. 20, 2011, conversation — which came about a week after a published report about the same handwriting appearing on multiple donation forms for Liu’s campaign — Ru repeatedly assured Pan that he wasn’t the target of Liu’s unidentified enemies.
“So then, this isn’t against you, they’re not up against anyone, they’re up against John, it’s just John, precisely because he’s the clear favorite,” she said, according to a transcript translated from Mandarin.
“He, he really is becoming a threat to other people, so they want to get rid of him. (Laughs) Simple as that.”
Later, Ru called the efforts against Liu, a Queens Democrat, “detestable,” saying “they want to . . . scare off these supporters.”
“Everyone then goes, ‘Yikes, how come you’re so troublesome? . . . So they’ve taken aim at this thing of ours, right?” she said.
Ru then suggested Liu’s enemies were trying to exploit a cultural weakness.
“Yeah, because we, we Chinese have . . . a commonality which is that everyone is afraid of trouble,” she said.
“No one wants that, and also, they’re saying yeah, you’re the biggest one, your biggest supporters, source, I’ll scare, scare them off, who is going to dare backing you? Right?”
The transcript of Ru and Pan’s conversation was made public by lawyers for former Liu campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, who’s accused of conspiring with Pan to funnel crooked contributions into Liu’s mayoral war chest.
Hou’s defense lawyers say other remarks made by Ru during the conversation show that “neither she nor Ms. Hou had any idea” that only actual contributors are supposed to fill out their donation forms.
Pan and Hou both previously disclosed that the feds wiretapped Liu’s telephone in a bid to nail him on campaign-finance charges.
Pan and Hou, who both maintain their innocence, are slated for trial next month.
Liu’s lawyer declined to comment. Neither Liu nor Ru has been charged.