Norman Seabrook trial witness grilled over falsehoods

Federal corruption witness Jona Rechnitz tried to “wriggle” out of responsibility for a gifts-for-favors scandal at the NYPD by invoking the Holocaust to federal agents, he testified Monday as defense cross-examination began at the bribery trial of former jail-union boss Norman Seabrook.

Rechnitz, an Orthodox Jew, admitted that when first questioned last year about paying for dinners and vacations for top cops, he told FBI agents he did it “as the grandson of Holocaust victims . . . to make sure the mistakes of the past were not repeated.”

“I was trying to wriggle my way out of the truth,” Rechnitz told Henry Mazurek, the lawyer for hedge fund founder Murray Huberfeld, who is charged with paying Seabrook $60,000 to invest $20 million in union pension money.

“Are your grandparents proud of that?” Mazurek said, prompting an objection from prosecutors that Manhattan U.S. District Judge Andrew Carter sustained.

In three days on the stand, Rechnitz, 34, a wheeler-dealer real estate investor from Los Angeles, testified he was the bagman for the alleged $60,000 bribe to Seabrook. He told jurors how efforts to use payoffs to police and political fundraising to become a player in New York landed him in the middle of two Ponzi schemes and a sprawling corruption probe.

During the first 90 minutes of cross examination, which will resume on Tuesday, Mazurek recited a litany of lies Rechnitz admitted to on direct examination — to the city on a gun license application, to the two defendants about his real estate holdings and a stake in the hedge fund, to federal agents and even to his wife.

Rechnitz generally admitted falsehoods, but not always. When asked if he lied to his wife about taking NYPD officials and a prostitute on a charter jet to Las Vegas, for example, Rechnitz, a father of five, responded, “I neglected to mention the details.”

Mazurek then asked Rechnitz if he “knew the difference” between the truth and a lie. “I don’t understand the question,” Rechnitz answered.

Earlier Monday, Rechnitz completed his direct testimony by launching a new broadside at New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who he said last week gave him access to City Hall and “help” on expediting five different personal and business problems after Rechnitz gave and raised $200,000.

Adding to that list, Rechnitz said Monday he also paid a Dominican Republic hotel bill for a de Blasio fundraising aide to ingratiate himself, and was later able to get de Blasio to meet privately and intervene for a businessman who said city approval of a nearby high-rise had diminished the value of his air rights at Grand Central Terminal.

Although the city never changed its posture, Rechnitz testified, he “put a lot of pressure” on de Blasio to get city planning commission chairman Carl Weisbrod to take a position more helpful to the businessman.

“I had the mayor speak to Carl about being more attentive to the issue,” Rechnitz testified.

City Hall, which last week denounced Rechnitz’s claims of access as false, said Monday it was “not unusual or inappropriate for the mayor to relay constituent complaints.”