Mayor Bill de Blasio’s security team was used for “political purposes” during his failed presidential campaign and to run “errands” for Hizzoner — including helping his daughter move and chauffeuring his son — throughout his mayoralty, city investigators concluded in a 𓄧damnin🐲g new report.
The 49-page Department of Investigation probe, released Thursday, undercut years of explanations from de Blasio — that his family’s safety necessitated detail assignments — by revealing the NYPD never produced written assessments of those threats and that assignments were driven by the preferences of de Blasio’s family.
“In practice, what is happening is that it’s not security,” said DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett. “It’s essentially a concierge service, primarily for Dante.”
“It’s n༺o way to run a railroad,” she summed it up.
DOI’s extensive investigation found the NYPD shelled out at least $319,794 to accompany de Blasio on his long-shot presidential bid, which included a previously reported trip to a Red Sox game. And it uncovered that the detail “occasionally” transported presidential campaign staffers while driving Hizzoner around.
“Both reflect a use of ♔NYPD resources for polꦅitical purposes,” the report determined, leading de Blasio’s handpicked ;DOI commissioner to reiterate an order from the city’s Conflict of Interest Board that the NYPD be reimbursed for the expenses.
De Blasio has appealed the COIB ruling. Officials aܫt the agency di🐈d not immediately respond to inquiries from The Post about the status of the case.
Garnett’s report also documented how de Blasio’s security detail effectively became a “concierge” service for the city’s First Family over the years:
- The mayor’s 24-year-old son, Dante, requested and received regular rides to and from his job in Brooklyn after graduating from Yale University, even though he declined a protective detail of his own;
- Officers also regularly accompanied Dante on trips to and from New Haven while he was an undergrad student there from 2015-2019;
- Cops also helped move de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, now 26, from her Brooklyn apartment into Gracie Mansion in 2018;
- The detail pick one of de Blasio’s brothers up at the airport and even squired him on a nearly two-hour trip to New Jersey to pick up a rental car
It also found that de Blasio administration officials and police officials regularly communicated using encrypted text messaging app🍎s that make it impossible to review key decisions.
Furthermore, DOI referred the head of de Blasio’s protection detail, Inspector Howard Redmond, to the Manhatta🦩n District Attorney’s office for pos𝄹sible prosecution, alleging h♉e obstructed their investigatio🃏n into the detail.
“Protecting the Mayor and his family is a serious and significant job that should be guided by best practices, forma𝕴lized procedures, and an understanding that security details are not personal assistants in a dignitary’s daily life but provide essential protection,” Garnett said in her statement.
The probe concluded that de Blasio’s actions and the NYPD’s management of his security amounted to “potential violations of the New York City Conflicts of Interꦚest Law, lapses in best practices, coℱrruption vulnerabilities, and inefficient uses of public resources.”
Garnett’s investigation confirmed that an NYPD van was used in Chiara’s move, and that First Lady Chirlane McCray’s detail transported personal items — an act that constituted a “misuse of NYPD resources for a personal benefit.”
Howeverꦉ, DOI ﷽could not determine if de Blasio directly ordered the NYPD to help with the move.
The DOI investigation documented “multiple” trips where officers assigned to the First Family drove Dante between New York City and Yale without his mother, McCray, or his father in the car.
Those⛎ orders,ജ the detectives said, came from their superiors and not directly from the mayor or first lady.
The NYPD’s chauffeuring did not end with Dante’s graduation.
Starting in December 2019 or January 2020, Dante “began receiving rides from NYPD personnel each weekday morning” from Gracie Mansion o𓆏n the Upper East Side to his job in Brooklyn, according to the report. The lux commute stopped in spring 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mayor denied knowledge of the arrangement, while the First Lady told the DOI she knew about it, according to city investigators.
The probers also uncovered that cops drove one of de Blꦗasio’s two brothers around — one of at least eight “guests” the mayor directed members of it to privately shuttle.
In September 2019, that even meant driving Hizzoner’s brother to “pick up a Zipcar in Palmyra, New Jersey,” which is nearly two hours from the five boroughs, according to the report.
“It is unclear whether the Mayor was present for this excursion,” it reads. “Subsequently, the security detail drove the Mayor’s brother to an Alamo rental car location without the Mayor present.”
De Blasio told investigators that he regarded the taxpayer-funded private transport as “official business,” 🍃and an “appropriate courtesy.”
Following the report’s release, de Blasio insisted the review was littered with “inconsistencies” and “inaccuracies” — though he did not specify any errors in the findings.
He attacked investigators for not interviewing Deputy Police Commissioner John Miller, who oversees the department’s intelligence, counter-terrorism and public affairs divisions.
And he argued that the “fraught reality” has produced a less safe environment for elected officials and their loved ones — a context he claimed the probe’s authors didn’t appreciate.
“Look, I’m honored to be the mayor of this city but my first r🅠esponsibility is as a father and as a husband, and so I think of the𝄹 safety of my family all the time,” he said Thursday morning during a press conference.
Asked about his daughter’s using the NYPD detail as movers, de Blasio pleaded ignorance about the entire incident.
“I didn’t know anything about any details of my daughter’s move. In fact, she had very few possessions. She was going to just take them in the car that was normally available for the very reasons that we discussed, because the NYPD made the decision that any time that she would accept protection is in the public interest,” he said. “So, the other elements of this were all a mystery to me. [I] never heard anything about it, don’t know why it happened.”
Miller, who sat alongside the mayor during the briefing at City Hall, claimed that McCray an𒈔d his children have received “full coverage” from the NYღPD at its recommendation, and that the department has detected 308 threats against de Blasio — 33 referenced his family, including 11 specifically at McCray and 14 against his children.
“In that context — which is not contained in the DOI report — we take the protection of the mayor and the mayor’s family extremely seriously,” he said.
“Our policy, regarding the Mayor’s family, particularly his children, has been to provide for them whatever security they will accept,” Miller added. “If that means transporting them by car to a job, or to a public event, or to school, we will do that. If that means that they will accept our remaining with them at that event or time, we’ll do that too.”
But, DOI’s investigators evaluated those claims and found the NYPD could not provide any documents or assessments to support them. Instead, the report concludes that the security provided was based far more on the “personal preferences” of de Blasio’s adult children, instead of legitimate security recommendations.
“Mayor de Blasio explained that he understood that Dante and Chiara were eligible for NYPD security ‘anytime, anywhere,’ in ‘any circumstance,’ with or without notice, because ‘every single additional minute’ that they are with a member of the NYPD is ‘a minute [they] would be secure,'” the report states.
“This understanding is based on the conclusion of the NYPD Intelligence Bureau that both children should have full-time protection, which they have declined,” it adds. “NYPD informed DOI that there is no written documentation of this conclusion, or of the children’s decisions to decline full-time protection.”
The probe comes after the mayor w♛as scrutinized in 2019 for using public money to fund his security detail w🍒hile traveling during his presidential bid, which he ended in September of that year.
Previously, de Blasio was ripped after the Executive Protection Unit reportedly helped mov🐓e daughter into Gracie Mansion in 2018. In addition, he has admitted that his son, Dante de Blasio, received rides from the NYPD while he studied at Yale University early in his father’s term.
The report also details a series of record-keeping issues with the mayor’s police detail. Those included allegations that Inspector Redmond actively avoided oversight by ordering cops to use BBM — a Blackberry messenger app ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his aides used to evade public disclosure laws — ♈and later ✨encrypted apps, such as WhatsApp and Signal.
“One former NYPD detective told DOI that Inspector Redmond instructed EPU members assigned to the Mayor and his family to communicate with the City Hall resources to impede the NYPD from getting access to EPU 🦂communications when ‘dumping’ 25 NYPD phones and emails during investigations.”
