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Furious city officials yesterday blasted Mayor Bloomberg for hiding former Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith’s ugly secret — that he resigned because he’d been busted for allegedly attacking his wife in their luxurious Washington home.
But instead of coming clean on why he had kept his mouth shut last month, Bloomberg ran for cover, spending the day ducking reporters who wanted to ask about The Post’s bombshell revelation that Goldsmith was done in by his temper, not by his poor performance during the Christmas blizzard.
Last night, Bloomberg abruptly canceled an event on the Circle Line with a German-American friendship group, where an organizer announced the mayor would be absent because of an “emergency.”
He also pulled the plug on his weekly live-radio program today.
“I am deeply troubled by the news that one of the mayor’s highest-ranking aides resigned weeks ago after being arrested in a reported domestic violence incident, and spent two nights in jail — but we are only learning this today, in a belated newspaper account,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.
“The mayor and his staff should give a full accounting of what they knew and when they knew it,” he said. ” ‘No comment’ is not an acceptable response.”
Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Bloomberg ally and expected recipient of his endorsement to succeed him, said, “Facts relevant to [Goldsmith’s] termination should be made public.”
City Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), who led hearings into the botched snow-removal effort said, “They protect their own. They protected [short-tenured Schools Chancellor] Cathie Black, and they’ll protect Goldsmith.”
A Washington police report said Goldsmith went ballistic in his Georgetown home July 30 after his wife, Margaret — first-cousin to ex-Vice President Dan Quayle — barked, “I should have put a bullet through you years ago!”
Goldsmith, 64, then allegedly shoved the lupus-afflicted newspaper heiress into a kitchen counter and smashed a phone when she said, “You’re not going to do this to me again. I’m calling the police.”
He allegedly grabbed Margaret, 59, as she tried to call cops on another phone.
The police chronology says Margaret, who called cops after breaking free, “was assaulted.”
Goldsmith was released from jail Aug. 1, and prosecutors dropped the case when his wife said she didn’t want to press charges.
Both Goldsmiths on Wednesday revealed that Stephen resigned Aug. 4 because he did not want his arrest to become “a distraction.”
Bloomberg’s spokesman Marc La Vorgna refused to explain why the mayor never told the public — or top elected officials — that his third-in-command had been arrested.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly — whose department was overseen by Goldsmith — did not know of the arrest until Goldsmith personally told him Wednesday, Kelly’s spokesman said.
Asked why Bloomberg was unavailable to reporters yesterday, La Vorgna cited multiple press conferences and said, “We wanted to give him some time to catch up and work on the other parts of the job.”
Margaret Goldsmith now claims that Stephen never got violent and that the police report inaccurately characterized the incident.
“There was no crime committed by Stephen or myself; there was no violence nor any physical harm,” Margaret said in a statement yesterday.
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram and David Seifman