A candidate vying for a City Council seat in Brooklyn is facing sex-abuse charges and once served time for impersonating a cop, The Post has learned.
George Smith, a Republican who is running for Democrat Bill de Blasio’s Park Slope seat, has been slapped with misdemeanor charges of forcible touching, sexual misconduct, harassment and sexual abuse in Nassau County, according to records from the District Attorney’s Office there.
The incident allegedly took place Dec. 28, said officials, who declined to provide the identity of the victim or details of the alleged crimes.
But Smith’s lawyer, Glenn Ingoglia, identified the woman making the charges as the candidate’s estranged wife and claimed they stemmed from an ongoing bitter divorce and child-custody battle.
“I am confident he’s going to be acquitted of all charges,” said Ingoglia.
The wife’s lawyer, Patrick Curry, was speechless when The Post informed him that Smith, 34, was running for public office.
“I’m dumbfounded,” Curry said twice.
Smith himself insisted he was being railroaded, adding, “We’re open and honest here . . . I have nothing to hide.”
It’s highly unusual in politics to see someone running for elected office for the first time while facing charges of such a nature.
Smith made headlines in Brooklyn recently after a bizarre flap in which he accused Gerry O’Brien, a consultant to a rival candidate, of holding his ballot petitions hostage.
He’s since made the ballot and faces a GOP primary Sept. 15 — a week after his scheduled Sept. 8 court date — but has barely been able to raise funds, raking in just over $2,000 so far.
Even if he becomes the nominee, the district is overwhelmingly Democratic and the Republican stands little chance of getting elected.
Smith, who says he’s in the “party rental” business and only recently moved out of Nassau to his native Brooklyn, described himself as having “a piece of the American dream.”
“I grew up poor. I lived in homeless shelters . . . [I] bought a nice house, became a respected man in the community,” he said.
He declined to get into the details surrounding his time served from early 1996 through March 1997 on robbery charges in Queens, a case in which records show he allegedly impersonated a cop to rob someone.
Queens records show two arrests for the same type of crime for Smith within a month in late 1995.
“It was not a violent crime,” he said, adding he was a kid at the time. “Life is a learning experience. You make a mistake . . . Everybody deserves a second chance.”