From the Daily News:When Mayor Bloomberg funneled $750,000 to a longtime Queens ally last fall, he thought he was buying a citywide poll watching operation.
He may have paid for a house in Forest Hills Gardens, too.
The house was the childhood home of John Haggerty Jr., the Republican operative who has claimed he was working as a volunteer on Bloomberg's third-term campaign.
Haggerty has ducked calls to explain how he spent the $750,000 payment, which went into his newly formed "Special Election Operations LLC."
Special Election Operations got its $750,000 on Dec. 11.
Six days later, Haggerty bought out his brother Bart's share of the family home - paying $1.6 million to the estate of their late father, records show.
It's unclear how much of the purchase was in cash, but Haggerty apparently did not take out a mortgage. The next month, records show, Bart had enough money to buy a $619,000 apartment in Forest Hills - again, apparently without a mortgage.
So where did the Haggerty brothers get that cash? After all, it had been almost a year and a half since their father, a respected longtime lawyer in Albany, passed away.
In his will, he split most of his estate between the brothers - though he gave an extra $30,000 to Bart "due to the extra care, support and effort he expended on my behalf."
Haggerty had another potential pot of Bloomberg cash to tap as well: The mayor gave $120,000 on Nov. 20 to a new political committee Haggerty set up, the 28th Assembly District Republican Committee.
7 comments:
Crappy, I don't want to nit-pick, because you're doing a great job running this story, but it's "Haggerty" with an "e" not "Haggarty" with an "a", which is how it's spelled in the story "tags". Thanks.
Gorgeous home . . .
Some developer would love to tear this beauty down.
does anyone think that this is the end of the story? please.
these guys used Bloomy's money to pay back themselves for what they were doing against the Queens County GOP.
Did Bloomy know? Well if he didn't, he's not such a hands-on manager of money and if he did, he's been lying to the public.
But hey, are we really surprised?
Bloomberg is a well known micro-manager. He had to know. Too bad for him that Haggerty was so sloppy and didn't do a better job concealing the fact that the money was a bribe to get Haggerty to deliver the republican line to him.
btw, the late father was Queens County republican leader for a short time, back in the '80s.
"Bloomberg is a well known micro-manager. He had to know. Too bad for him that Haggerty was so sloppy and didn't do a better job concealing the fact that the money was a bribe to get Haggerty to deliver the republican line to him."
you're 1/2 right: the $ was a reward, not a bribe, for haggerty's constant attacks on qgop.
Haggerty's father was the "Queens Republican Chairman from 1984-89 and the chief of staff/counsel to the Majority for the Republicans in the state senate from 1973-1988 under then-majority leader Warren Anderson."
Keep Digging!
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