It was a jailhouse crock.
A gang member accused of killing one of Gov. Cuomo’s top aides targeted the city Department of Correction commissioner with a bogus excessive-force claim — and it took the jails boss weeks to clear his name, The Post has learned.
Tyshawn Crawford, who was being held at Rikers Island in the 2015 killing, took an opportunity to mess with Commissioner Joseph Ponte when Ponte toured the jail on Dec. 2.
Crawford, 21, threw a fit when Ponte’s security detail ordered him to step back to let the commish pass.
He shouted at the officers, then challenged Ponte to a fight.
Ponte walked past Crawford without even looking at him.
Still, Crawford — one of four gangbangers charged in the shooting death of senior Cuomo adviser Carey Gabay at last year’s J’Ouvert festivities in Brooklyn — filed a complaint alleging that Ponte grabbed his forearm.
Correction investigators launched a probe.
Fortunately for Ponte, the department recently increased its use of video surveillance at Rikers, and the incident was caught on tape.
Footage of the incident showed a person grabbing Crawford’s arm, but it was another inmate who was trying to calm him down, a source said.
“The video proves the claim is unfounded,” said department spokesman Peter Thorne.
A department source called Crawford a “liar who should spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
“He’s a classic piece of s- -t who allegedly killed a talented and prominent man in the community, and now he tried to take down a commissioner,” the source said.
Gabay, 43, was struck in the head by a stray bullet after he and his brother got caught in the middle of a gang shootout during the J’Ouvert festivities in Crown Heights on Sept. 7, 2015. He died nine days later.
The Harvard-educated lawyer, who lived in Clinton Hill, was a first deputy counsel for Cuomo’s Empire State Development Corp.
Crawford refused a request for an interview. His lawyer, Daniel Lynch, declined to comment.