The IMF chief who allegedly sodomized a Manhattan hotel maid proved the height of pompous arrogance yesterday, throwing a fit over a battle on his bail — which left him parked on a wooden bench in an East Harlem station house the whole day, sources said.
Leading French presidential contender and accused sex attacker Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, was finally led out of the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit at around 11 p.m. in handcuffs, scowling and red-faced.
Sporting a long navy-blue coat and an open collar, he refused to acknowledge reporters as he was placed in the back of a police car and whisked off to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn.
Sources said he was taken out of the police station house only after finally agreeing to a medical exam — and only after cops had moved to obtain a warrant to gather potential DNA evidence.
Clues they’re looking for include possible DNA from his alleged victim that might be found in scratches on his body.
He had been set for arraignment last night, but one of his lawyers, Bill Taylor, at a hastily called press conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court, said:
“Our client willingly consented to a scientific and forensic examination … at the request of the government. It’s being done. In light of the hour, we’ve agreed to postpone the arraignment until [this morning], and we expect to be in court with him.”
Asked how Strauss-Kahn was doing, Taylor replied, “He’s tired, but he’s fine.”
Strauss-Kahn, 63, is accused of sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a maid at the Sofitel hotel near Times Square Saturday afternoon as she tried to clean his room.
Another one of his high-powered lawyers, Ben Brafman, said Strauss-Kahn “intends to vigorously defend these charges, and he denies any wrongdoing.”
Earlier in the day, Strauss-Kahn was outraged that he wasn’t getting the VIP treatment he’s accustomed to as the jet-setting head of the International Monetary Fund and darling of the French left, a police source told The Post.
Cops “are not thrilled by the French idiot, or his attorney,” Brafman, the source said.
Strauss-Kahn, one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful moneymen, had been forced to cool his heels in the lockup of the NYPD’s Special Victims Unit in East Harlem as Brafman and celebrity bondsman Ira Judelson faced off with the Manhattan DA’s Office over a bail package, sources said.
The dingy digs, where prisoners are allotted $1.80 per meal, were a far cry from the $3,000-a-night luxury suite that Strauss-Kahn had been enjoying at the Sofitel New York only a day earlier.
The whiny fat cat had to tough it out after an assistant district attorney backtracked after initially offering the suspected sex fiend $250,000 bail — on the direct order of the prosecutor’s boss, Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., sources said.
As of last night, Vance was seeking bail of up to $2 million, plus the stipulation that Strauss-Kahn wear an ankle bracelet. His passport has already been confiscated.
“The concern of the DA’s office is there is no extradition treaty with France, and this guy could pull a Polanski,” the source said, referring to director Roman Polanski, who faced a child-sex rap in California in 1977 and remained on the lam in France for more than 30 years.
Strauss-Kahn, a leading Socialist who was expected to challenge French President Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election, faces charges of attempted rape, criminal sexual assault and unlawful imprisonment. He could land up to 20 years in prison, if convicted.
In an ironic twist, Strauss-Kahn may have inadvertently helped cops capture him before he fled the country.
After the alleged assault Saturday, Strauss-Kahn was so desperate to flee that he left his cellphone in the hotel room, officials said.
He also gave away his location, calling the hotel to tell management that he had left behind his phone and that he was at JFK Airport.
So when the incident was reported and cops went looking for Strauss-Kahn, the hotel was able to direct authorities to the airport, where he was pulled off a plane just before it departed for Paris at 4:40 p.m.
Cops brought his accuser to the East Harlem precinct house yesterday so she could identify Strauss-Kahn in a lineup, which she did, sources said.
Investigators also took swabs of DNA from the maid and the hotel room where Strauss-Kahn allegedly forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to rape her.
Co-workers and acquaintances yesterday described the maid, a 32-year-old Bronx resident, as a hardworking African immigrant with a husband and at least one child, a 16-year-old daughter. Her name is being withheld by The Post because of the nature of the alleged crime.
“She’s a good person, very nice, very friendly. She’s in shock,” said another Sofitel maid.
“The office said, ‘Don’t ask her too much because she’s sad. Give her a hug,’¤” the co-worker added.
The hotel said in a statement that Strauss-Kahn’s accuser has worked there three years and that her performance “satisfactory.”
The Sofitel maid told cops she entered the aging lothario’s 28th-floor suite at the West 44th Street hotel at about noon Saturday. She said she’d been told to clean the room, No.¤2805-06, and thought it was empty.
But Strauss-Kahn was in the bathroom and came out naked, found her in the bedroom cleaning and pushed her on the bed and assaulted her, she claimed.
She escaped into the suite’s hallway, where he then “takes down her panties and sexually assaults her” again, a police source said yesterday.
Police said Strauss-Kahn does not have diplomatic immunity, but Reuters reported that he might have limited immunity — but only for charges related to his job at the helm of the IMF.
The money big has been married to New York-born French journalist and millionaire heiress Anne Sinclair, 63, since 1991. She was at the couple’s $4 million Paris apartment when the alleged attack took place, and was believed to be jetting to New York yesterday.
The couple also has home in tony Potomac, Md., near the IMF’s headquarters in Washington, DC.
Yesterday, Sinclair insisted that she doesn’t “believe for a second the accusations against my husband.”
“I don’t doubt that his innocence will be established,” she said in a statement.
Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland in Washington, DC, and Lachlan Cartwright, Rebecca Rosenberg, John Doyle, C.J. Sullivan and Perry Chiaramonte in New York
larry.celona@nypost.com