A conservative watchdog group sued the city and Mayor de Blasio Thursday, demanding more information about the mayor’s communications with his long-time friend Patrick Gaspard, who just quit this month as U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.
Judicial Watch Inc. said it filed a formal request for “any and all records of communications” between the two men in June after the mayor said Gaspard was “an agent of the city” along with four other men who act as de Blasio’s informal kitchen cabinet of advisers.
Gaspard’s inclusion in that group raised eyebrows because ambassadors are federal employees who are not supposed to be engaged in partisan political activities while they are on the government payroll.
The de Blasio administration for months resisted disclosing any information about the mayor’s interaction with the all-male group, arguing that as “agents of the city,” their communications with City Hall were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information laws.
On Thanksgiving Eve, the administration folded a little, releasing some information.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Leonard says the records appeal officer for the mayor’s office, Henry Berger, wrote him on Oct. 11 that a single postponement in issuing a response was “not unreasonable” and ruled that the records access officers should respond “without further postponements.”
Instead, he said, the responses have been postponed twice and now he’s not promised any answers until Jan. 20 at the earliest.
“The records at issue concern only one person — Ambassador Patrick Gaspard — and cover a discrete time period. None of the delays, and especially this last delay, are ‘reasonable under the circumstances,’ ” Leonard says.
He asks the courts to direct the mayor’s office to “respond immediately” to Judicial Watch’s FOIL requests.
A Republican aide complained in 2014 that Gaspard had helped de Blasio get elected mayor in 2013, a no-no because of his diplomatic post.
Gaspard denied the allegations. “Proud to be friends with Bill de Blasio for 25 years and I’m thrilled by his win. That’s the extent of my NYC gaze,” he said in a tweet.
Gaspard returned to New York earlier this month to take a newly created top job at the Open Society Foundation, a pro-democracy group funded by George Soros.
Judicial Watch is a conservative group that has filed numerous legal challenges about the way Hillary Clinton handled her emails when she was Secretary of State.
