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Emails Expose DeBlasio Using Taxpayer $$$ to Drive Political Ambitions

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Emails have been exposed demonstrating that Mayor Bill de Blasio used NYC taxpayer funding to drive his national ambitions in politics. In September 2015, the NYC mayor was pursuing the support of labor and elected officials for his Progressive Agenda. He spent countless hours weekly pushing his income inequality platform to prospective supporters. As reported by the NY Post, Hizzoner instructed his staff to come up with a pertinent city pretext to justify a political trip to Washington, DC.

De Blasio arranged a meeting with could-be supporters in D.C. for Sept. 24, 2015. A few days before the trip, however, he realized that he lacked a city-related validation for the taxpayer-paid excursion. “We need at least one good hit to build the trip around. One important govt mtg or one speaking opportunity or presser,” he wrote in an email to staffers and outside consultants. “Something weighty that relates to my immediate governmental duties. The rest can be [The Progressive Agenda]-related mtgs.” The trip ended up being delayed a day, so as to overlap it with a meeting of mayors.

The emails also confirm that the mayor used City Hall’s research arm to toil on his political platform. On July 24, 2015, the mayor’s chief of staff, Tom Snyder, contacted City Hall’s head of research, Mahen Gunaratna with a request. “Hi Mahen – the mayor has asked that you and Hayley Prim coordinate on some research needs related to [The Progressive Agenda] policy. Hayley will be contacting you,” Snyder wrote. Prim was then handling The Progressive Agenda account. The expectation was for the research team to create dossiers on 70 mayors across the country that de Blasio could try to court for his platform.

On Sept. 3, 2015, Prim emailed Gunaratna about assembling five dossiers per week, in areas that would overlap between the mayors’ policies and The Progressive Agenda. “Hi Mahen! I wanted to see if I could engage you some more on putting together profiles on Mayors that we want to target for TPA. The 5 that you did before were perfect, and super helpful, and we have now tiered out our priority list, around early states, largest dem cities, etc,” she wrote. “Do you have the bandwidth to help with this if I gave you 5 mayors per week…? Not sure if you still have interns, enough staff to spend some time on this. Let me know!” Mahen replied, “Think so – always happy to help.” He added later, “This may take some time, but we’ll get working on it.”

Despite all the help the busy agenda received it was fated for doom. In December 2015, a presidential candidates forum the mayor hoped to host in Iowa had to be canceled due to a lack of interest. The entire program was closed down a few months later, in early 2016, when a federal investigation was opened to probe de Blasio’s fundraising for other political initiatives.

By Hadassa Kalatizadeh

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