Metro

Video shows Smith making deals in bid to become mayor

Here is state Sen. Malcolm Smith sucking up to an undercover federal agent on a clandestine video filmed during a meeting at a Grand Central Terminal restaurant.

The undercover agent met with Smith to discuss how to bribe politicians to support a run by Smith, a Democrat, for mayor on the Republican ticket, prosecutors have said during Smith’s ongoing bribery and corruption trial in White Plains federal court.

“You pull this off, you can have the house [Gracie Mansion]. I’ll be a tenant,” Smith told the agent during one of their meetings.

Smith even boasted that it was acceptable for him to pay his way into Gracie Mansion because that’s “the business of government,” according to tapes of conversations he had with the undercover agent.

But a late disclosure of a trove of recorded phone calls by federal prosecutors has led defense attorneys to demand a mistrial or dismissal of the indictments.

“I am asking for a mistrial,” Smith lawyer Gerald Shargel said in court Friday.

Lawyers for Smith co-defendants Queens GOP City Councilman Dan Halloran and former Queens GOP Vice Chair Vincent Tabone pushed even harder, arguing Friday that the case should be dismissed.

“If you grant a mistrial and allow the government to retry the case, you are essentially rewarding bad behavior,” said Halloran attorney Vinoo Varghese.

“We are moving to dismiss the indictment.”

At issue are 90 hours of recorded phone calls — including 28 hours in Yiddish — that federal prosecutors failed to turn over to defense attorneys until well after the trial began.

Defense attorneys say there may be information on the tapes that could exonerate their clients but that it could take weeks to translate and review the tapes — time that could cost the trial its jury.

The trial “easily will spill into the Fourth of July week. We’re going to easily blow by the estimate we gave [the jurors],” Judge Kenneth Karas said Friday.

“I am concerned about what will happen with this jury,” said Shargel.

The recorded phone calls are of Moses Stern, a Rockland County developer who became a government informer to try to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.

Both sides will submit briefs on whether the case should be dismissed over the weekend and Judge Karas will rule Monday at 10 a.m.