“I was defending myself!”
That’s what a federal bankruptcy judge, charged with hitting his wife, told cops as he described the fight that left her with a bruised jaw in their Park Avenue apartment Saturday.
Judith Peck had come home late for her own birthday party, Judge James Peck told cops, according to a transcript of his Manhattan Criminal Court arraignment.
The two ended up arguing about a ladder that Judith, 64, had stashed in his closet, Peck told cops.
“We slapped each other back and forth,” Peck said.
“I was defending myself,” the 63-year-old jurist claimed.
Peck oversaw the first week and a half of the liquidation of Bernard Madoff’s investment firm, and is also presiding over the massive bankruptcy of fallen Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers.