Star federal corruption witness testifies in Seabrook trial

Wheeler-dealer real estate investor Jona Rechnitz insinuated himself so deeply into New York City’s power structure that he was able to help Mayor Bill de Blasio solve a political problem with the city jails in 2014, according to testimony in Manhattan federal court Thursday.

Rechnitz, the star prosecution witness at city jail-union boss Norman Seabrook’s bribery trial, said by wining and dining Seabrook and bundling donations for de Blasio he had the confidence of both when Seabrook attacked Joseph Ponte, the mayor’s choice for corrections commissioner.

“I told Bill as a favor I’d get Norman to … be nicer and kinder to Ponte,” Rechnitz testified.

He succeeded, he said, and prosecutors showed the jury the subject line from an email Rechnitz later sent to de Blasio: “Norman under control.”

Seabrook, 57, is accused of taking a $60,000 bribe to invest $20 million in union pension money with co-defendant Murray Huberfeld’s hedge fund. Rechnitz, 34, says he was the bagman for the payoff, but has also regaled jurors for two days with colorful testimony about his quest to become a “macher” — Yiddish for a big man — in the big city.

A Los Angeles native who pleaded guilty to conspiracy last year after being at the center of a citywide corruption probe, Rechnitz testified that he got access to City Hall after raising $100,000 in 2013 but later rebuffed a request from aide Ross Offinger for more cash when the “help” he was getting on personal and business issues slowed down.

That, he said, led to a call from the mayor himself, who said a maximum contribution — $102,000 — to his effort to elect a Democratic state Senate meant a “great deal,” and Rechnitz agreed to pony up as a “personal favor.” After that, he said, the help improved.

“Ross got a lot of the issues I brought up attended to,” he testified.

His connection to union boss Seabrook, he said, came from building relationships with NYPD officials — at times by providing prostitutes — and cultivating former NYPD Chief Phil Banks, who introduced him to Seabrook. Rechnitz said he entertained the two on a yacht and at restaurants and cigar bars, and treated them to vacations to the Dominican Republic and Israel.

As prosecutors showed videos and pictures of the three smoking cigars at Banks’ NYPD office, swimming in the Dead Sea and shopping for a backgammon board for Banks at a souk in Israel, Rechnitz explained the goal. “To build a relationship and look like a very important person,” he said.

Rechnitz, who was helping find money for Huberfeld’s hedge fund Platinum Partners, said the payoff came one night during the Dominican trip when Seabrook drank too much and opened up — complaining that he had a hard life as a black man who grew up with a single mom, showed him a tattoo on his chest of his deceased dog, and said everyone made money but him.

“I felt that was my opening,” Rechnitz testified, and Seabrook eagerly took to the idea of getting payments in return for union pension investments.

Banks, Offinger and de Blasio have not been charged with wrongdoing. City Hall, in a statement Friday, called Rechnitz a “failed fixer of grand delusion” and said, “If he says he had unfettered access, he is a liar.”

Rechnitz’s testimony is scheduled to resume on Monday.