Sen. Piggy slouched into the downtown daylight, bald and well-fed, dry-eyed and nasty. And more than a little scary.
“How are you doing? How are you feeling?’’ I asked the supposedly broken and disgraced ex-state Sen. Carl Kruger.
One thing he wasn’t. He was not sorry.
Moments earlier, this man was credited by his lawyer Ben Brafman with curing a man’s cancer, or something equally God-like.
But now Kruger, 62, who’s known for whipping out the hankies and bawling like a piglet when it suits his needs, just glared at me menacingly.
“How are you feeling?’’ he spat. “How are you feeling?’’ Then he threw up his arm in an F-you gesture that had me running for cover, while his lawyer ushered him away.
Having a bad day, Carl?
Kruger was the powerful Brooklyn pol who piggishly helped himself to $500,000 in bribes, which he deposited into his younger gay boyfriend’s account — then fought like a devil against gay marriage. If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than a crooked pol, it’s a crooked, nasty pol who lies about whom he’s stealing for.
Well, Kruger screwed his constituents. He helped make sure that the people of New York never again trust their leaders in the Albany cesspool. And he screwed his boyfriend, gynecologist Michael Turano, then fought the good fight against gay marriage that was as big a lie as everything else in his sorry life.
Kruger’s bravura performance in my face outside federal court — the man is easily three times my size — came after he was sentenced to seven years behind bars for betraying the trust of his constituents.
The hundreds of thousands he took, from hospitals and a lobbyist fighting against Walmart — a business that could greatly benefit Brooklyn — he then used to pay for a million-dollar waterfront mansion in Mill Basin that Turano built along with his unspeakably greedy mother, Dottie, 74, and hosebag brother, Gerard, another gynecologist.
Their yacht, Special Delivery, was parked out back.
Kruger lived the high life, and even tried to say that Dottie, not Michael, was his lover. His excuse in the end? Kruger tried to say he did the crime not out of hoggishness, but out of love for the Turano family.
“I am broken, destroyed and disgraced,’’ he told Judge Jed Rakoff. “I will be haunted with that reality for the rest of my life.’’
I’ve heard more heart-wrenching soliloquies in AT&T commercials.
As if proving that Kruger is sorry for just one thing — getting caught — Dottie Turano muttered aloud after sentencing,
“Here comes the next crucifixion!’’
She was referring to the sentencing of Kruger’s boy toy, her son, Michael, 50.
Michael Turano got two years in prison. When court was done, the Turano boys hugged Carl, each other and Dottie, sobbing aloud. Crocodile tears.
But Carl Kruger was dry-eyed and defiant.
Enjoy the communal showers, Sen. Piggy. You deserve every minute in prison.