This time, he may have written himself off for good.
Federal prosecutors are trying to determine if former state Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. used tax money intended for his Bronx medical clinic to pay a ghostwriter helping him pen a memoir, a source told The Post.
FBI agents have already seized audio recordings of some 70 hours of conversations between Espada and the writer he hired for the project and have been trying to trace the money the pol used to finance the undertaking, the law-enforcement source said.
“They were interested in who the real payer of the checks was,” the writer, Donald MacLaren, told The Post of his conversations with the feds.
The US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn already believes that Espada’s Soundview Health Center was illegally underwriting the former pol’s lavish personal expenditures and it has charged him with trying to use corporate money to buy a Bentley and to pay for tens of thousands of dollars worth of sushi dinners, among other things.
MacLaren, 67, a respected New York author who has published more than a dozen books — often working as a ghostwriter — said the agents who talked to him were interested in learning more about Espada’s autobiography project.
“Recently, I had a meeting with the FBI,” said MacLaren. “They wanted to know what we talked about. I gave them a photocopy of my bank statements.”
MacLaren, who wouldn’t say how much he was paid by Espada, said the project began when the pol contacted him in 2006 to work on the autobiography.
The planned book, which was never completed, was to capture the sweep of Espada’s “rough and tumble” rise to the pinnacle of state politics from humble beginnings in The Bronx, through his days as a young boxer, and also recount the creation of the health-care business that has become his downfall.
“I think he wanted to be a hero character in his memoir,” MacLaren said, adding that Espada lost interest over time and the book was never completed.
Espada’s attorney Susan Necheles has flatly denied that her client committed any wrongdoing and Espada himself has predicted his name will be cleared.
Espada, 56, and his son, Pedro Gautier Espada, 35, face embezzlement and conspiracy charges in an alleged scheme that prosecutors claim netted them at least $500,000 earmarked to help impoverished clients of their network of health clinics.