Former Democrat Mayor Hit With ‘Record Fine’

Far-left former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio received a fine of nearly $500,000 for misusing public funds for his security detail in a pitiful presidential run in 2019.

While campaigning during his mayoral term, De Blasio used taxpayer money to pay New York City Police Department members who worked as his family’s security, according to the city Conflicts of Interest Board.

De Blasio accumulated $319,794.20 in travel costs, which included airfare, hotels, and car rentals.

The board ordered the former mayor to repay the travel expenses.

In addition, the board slapped De Blasio with a $155,000 fine for the misuse of resources.

It’s the largest fine ever levied by the board.

📰 Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio fined $475K for misusing public funds

– Largest ever imposed by the New York City
– 31 out-of-state trips
– Was warned prior misuse
– Given 30 days to pay

Read what he did instead of paying:https://t.co/qWMuMg6pQS

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) June 16, 2023

Notorious Grifting Marxist Bill de Blasio Hit With Record Fine For Abusing NYC Resources https://t.co/BWt9CJzWv3

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 16, 2023

Per Bloomberg:

De Blasio, 62, used city funds to pay the security details’ expenses despite receiving an explicit order from COIB on May 15, 2019, that such expenses weren’t allowed. The board told de Blasio that while the city could pay the costs of NYPD officers’ salaries and overtime while they were serving on the mayor’s detail, using city money to pay for the extra travel expenses for his presidential campaign constituted using “city resources for a non-city purpose.”

The board also said “using an official position for financial gain or ‘personal or private advantage’” was in violation of the city’s charter.

The day after receiving the opinion, May 16, 2019, de Blasio formally embarked on his presidential campaign.

An attorney for de Blasio said in a statement that the former mayor will file a lawsuit in response to the board’s decision, to stop it from taking effect.

“COIB’s action — which seeks to saddle elected officials with security costs that the city has properly borne for decades — is dangerous, beyond the scope of their powers, and illegal,” Andrew Celli, de Blasio’s attorney, said in the statement.

De Blasio’s fundraising and campaign practices have drawn scrutiny from regulators before. Last month, he was fined $53,100 by the Federal Elections Commission for improperly routing large sums of money to his presidential campaign from a pair of state and federal political action committees he had created.

In 2016 and 2017, he was the subject of dual probes by both the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Southern District US Attorney’s Office for his fundraising practices.

Thief and that goes for your wife too ~ ~ Ex-NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio hit with historic $475K fine for misusing NYPD as security during failed presidential bid https://t.co/xNo7XoNC14 pic.twitter.com/FprClWq5O8

— Mary (@matjendav4) June 16, 2023

While De Blasio was New York City mayor, his wife couldn’t account for $850 million in taxpayer money allocated to her for a mental health program.

From Daily Mail in 2019:

Bill de Blasio’s wife Chirlane McCray cannot explain where $850million given to the mental health program she champions has gone, according to reports.

In the three years it has been running, organizers at ThriveNYC have largely failed to keep records of the initiative’s achievements – and data that has been collected shows it lagging well behind targets.

Despite that, the program has been granted an even bigger budget going forward and is now on track to spend $1billion over five years.

The data comes from a Politico report that shows those running the scheme have largely failed to measure its impact or keep track of spending.

Thrive said it has developed a list of 417 metrics to measure how effective the program is moving forward, but asked to assess its impact so far, Politico said the data was piecemeal and showed a largely failing picture.