He’s keeping his friends close.
After tapping his campaign treasurer to serve as the city’s top investigator, Mayor de Blasio nominated another campaign supporter to serve on the city’s five-member ethics panel.
Lawyer Fernando Bohorquez Jr. — one of the mayor’s two nominees to the Conflicts of Interest Board — personally contributed $1,925 to de Blasio’s mayoral campaign last year and hosted three fund-raisers for him.
The BakerHostetler attorney also was one of two lawyers at the firm who worked pro-bono for de Blasio when he was public advocate — filing an amicus brief on his behalf last October on the stop-and-frisk lawsuit.
Other lawyers at the Midtown firm contributed an additional $12,500 to de Blasio’s campaign.
A number of good government groups said closeness to de Blasio doesn’t disqualify his nominees from serving, but is likely to bring more scrutiny.
“Like all high-level city officials, they have the burden of demonstrating their fairness,” said Gene Russianoff, of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
The conflicts board rules on ethics issues and imposes fines in cases that fall below the criminal level.
Bohorquez and another appointee, Columbia Law School Professor Richard Briffault, must still be confirmed by the City Council in order to join the Conflicts of Interest Board.