A top campaign adviser to Mayor Bloomberg — who won’t explain how he spent $750,000 of the mayor’s money — is now the target of a grand-jury probe.
Sources said last night that Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. is summoning witnesses before a panel examining what John Haggerty Jr. did with cash funneled through the state Independence Party.
As The Post first reported, Haggerty set up a mysterious company — Special Election Operations LLC — to conduct a supposed poll-watching operation on Election Day 2009.
But the firm didn’t register with the Secretary of State’s Office until Dec. 3, a month after the election.
Officials said Haggerty hired 200 to 300 poll watchers at $500 apiece, producing a bill far short of $750,000.
Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, the campaign’s communications director, said Haggerty wasn’t authorized to keep any leftovers.
Although Haggerty was listed as a “volunteer,” sources said he was regularly seen at Bloomberg’s Midtown campaign headquarters.
Haggerty’s $750,000 came by way of the Independence Party, which got $1.2 million from the mayor a few days before Election Day.
Independence Party chairman Frank McKay said party officials would cooperate in the probe.
The investigation follows a series of stories in The Post detailing how the mayor’s campaign and the Independence Party went to extraordinary lengths to hide what they were doing.
The address of Special Election Operations was the same as that of an Albany consulting firm run by aides to former Gov. George Pataki, who later said they had no other role in setting it up.
It took six days for the campaign to identify Haggerty as the man behind its formation.
Sources said the mayor’s campaign is not a target of the DA’s investigation.