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After days of public pressure, Mayor Bloomberg is expected to finally break his silence today on the scandalous exit of Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith.
The mum mayor didn’t disclose that Goldsmith had been jailed for two days on a charge of assaulting his wife before he resigned last month. The charges against Goldsmith, which were dismissed, were a City Hall secret until they were revealed by The Post on Thursday.
Bloomberg will address the issue with reporters this morning following a speech at the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, said spokesman Marc La Vorgna.
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When Goldsmith abruptly resigned Aug. 4, the mayor’s office said it was so he could pursue “private-sector opportunities.” Bloomberg never tamped down speculation among City Hall insiders that Goldsmith was booted because of his botched response to last December’s snowstorm.
Bloomberg was nowhere to be found yesterday.
“The mayor has no public schedule,” said La Vorgna, who refused to disclose the mayor’s whereabouts.
Bloomberg skipped his weekly live radio show with John Gambling Friday, leaving Gambling to blast him for his silence. Public Advocate Bill de Blasio sent Bloomberg a scathing letter saying he had lied about Goldsmith and slammed the mayor’s “decision to mislead the public and key figures in our own administration.”
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer was among the public officials who urged the mayor and his staff to “give a full accounting of what they knew and when they knew it.”
Mayoral aides huddled on Friday to try to figure out how Bloomberg could get a handle on the growing scandal, particularly with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaching in a week. The mayor is to give a speech Tuesday regarding the anniversary.
“It’s clear the folks in the administration could not continue the strategy of silence. This was too big a deal to be brushed under the carpet,” a Bloomberg critic said yesterday.
Meanwhile, Goldsmith and his wife, Margaret, launched their own public-relations offensive, insisting the domestic-violence incident was a “mistake” and a “misunderstanding.”
Margaret Goldsmith called police to the couple’s Washington, DC, home on July 30 after her husband allegedly shoved her into a counter and smashed a phone. The fight started after Margaret told her husband, “I should have put a bullet into you years ago,” according to the DC police report.
Prosecutors dropped the case against Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis, at his wife’s request.