Offinger frequently weighed in on decisions about who the mayor should select to fill important vacancies at City Hall or on boards and commissions. | Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office Emails show prominent role for de Blasio's top fundraiser in City Hall

In Mayor Bill de Blasio's City Hall, donor money talked.

Thousands of pages of emails, released in response to a Freedom of Information request, show Ross Offinger, de Blasio’s top political fundraiser, was closely involved in the hiring and daily operations of the new mayor’s City Hall before the mayor was even sworn in.


Offinger, a prominent character in the recent corruption trial of union boss Norman Seabrook, was never a City Hall employee, but nonetheless vetted appointments, prioritized fundraising calls for the mayor’s newly created political entity, and fast-tracked requests from donors to the highest levels of city government, the emails show.

The emails, released the day after Christmas, further illustrate a city government comfortable in the blurred lines between campaigning and governing, outside consultants and government officials. They also belie previous statements from the mayor’s office, which sought to distance itself from Offinger earlier this fall, when his name surfaced in connection with the Seabrook trial. Offinger was not accused of wrongdoing in the trial, but his sway over the administration was a central theme.

"Mr. Offinger wasn’t a government employee and did not make decisions at any level for city government," de Blasio’s spokesman Eric Phillips said at the time.

The emails suggest otherwise.

Offinger frequently weighed in on decisions about who the mayor should select to fill important vacancies at City Hall or on boards and commissions.

On Jan. 13, less than two weeks after de Blasio’s inauguration, Offinger fielded an email from Steve Sinacori — an attorney at the legal and consulting firm Akerman, and a member of de Blasio’s inaugural committee — requesting to speak with de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, about candidates for the powerful City Planning Commission, which approves land use projects throughout the five boroughs. De Blasio often consults his wife on appointments to positions within City Hall.

Offinger forwarded the inquiry along to de Blasio’s schedulers, who set up the call.

“[Steven] mentioned that he would like to follow up on an earlier conversation they had about City Planning candidates,” the mayor’s scheduler, Eunice Ko, told Offinger. “He says additional names are now being considered, and he’d like to offer some input on these new candidates. There are several pieces of information we’d like to have that we are going to put in a brief for Chirlane so she has some context.”

Sinacori, who bundled $500 for de Blasio’s 2013 campaign and also hosted a house party for him, was not a disinterested observer in the doings of the City Planning Commission.

Six real estate-related entities that later donated to the Campaign for One New York — the 501(c)(4) nonprofit that was shuttered in the wake of investigations into the mayor’s fundraising — hired Akerman as their lobbying firm, either outright or through a related entity or limited liability company, state lobbying records show.

One of those entities, Acadia Sherman Avenue LLC, would have to appear before the City Planning Commission as part of the review process for a mixed use development it hoped to build in Manhattan known as “Sherman Plaza.” In May of 2015, the LLC hired Sinacori to lobby on their behalf in front of the City Planning Commission and other city entities, at a rate of $625 an hour. Four other real-estate related entities that had donated to the Campaign For One New York also hired Sinacori to lobby on their behalf before the City Planning Commission.

Sinacori did not immediately respond to a phone call or an emailed request for comment.

Asked if the call between Sinacori and McCray ever happened, spokesman Eric Phillips said, "We don’t believe they spoke or met."

It was not the only time Offinger tried to facilitate an appointee to a city board, commission or office.

One email shows Offinger recommending City Hall hire Hayley Prim, who reported to him during the campaign. Prim was hired by the city as a policy analyst in the office of Alicia Glen, deputy mayor for Housing and Economic Development, before eventually going to work for Hilltop Public Solutions.

Offinger also suggested a candidate for the open position of executive director at the Mayor’s Fund.

And in multiple other instances, employees working in City Hall sought out Offinger’s suggestions or approval for potential candidates to city boards and commissions.

In October 2015, Micah Telegen, the appointments manager at the Mayor’s Office of Appointments, wrote to Offinger with a request: “Hi Ross, We’re currently working on mayoral appointments to the Central Park Conservancy, and wanted to get your take, if you have one, on the following two individuals, who are currently members.”

One candidate’s name is redacted — the other, Jill Lafer, is named.

“I know Jill. But neither have helped on BdB stuff for me,” Offinger responded, implying that neither candidate had helped Offinger with his fundraising efforts.

Instead, he suggested a different candidate, whose name has been redacted from the emails.

De Blasio on Thursday defended Offinger’s active role at City Hall.

“Again, some of the emails, as I understand it, were about things like inviting people to events for example because we’re going back now years on some of these emails,” the mayor said.

“When we were trying to win the Democratic National Convention, we put together a committee to show the Democratic party that there would be tremendous support in New York City including fundraising support. You know conventions are costly and the host city bears a lot of those expenses,” the mayor continued Thursday.

“So it was natural for someone who had been the finance director — and he came on toward the end of my 2013 campaign as the finance director — that someone in that position would provide names of people who should be invited to such a meeting. I think that’s quite normal,” de Blasio said.

The emails show Offinger’s influence extended beyond the wooing of national party leaders.

In December 2013, Offinger became the fundraiser for Campaign for One New York. In that role, Offinger raised money to support de Blasio’s top priority — securing state funding for universal pre-kindergarten in the city.

On Jan. 8, a little more than a week after the inauguration, Offinger pressured the mayor’s schedulers to book the mayor for a fundraising phone call to Marc Lasry, a hedge fund manager.

“I need that call made for UPK,” Offinger wrote.

In another exchange, Offinger suggested de Blasio pressure The Related Companies’ chairman Steve Ross, a powerful real estate executive, to donate to Campaign for One New York, in exchange for agreeing to talk with Ross about an affordable housing idea he had.

“It sounds like he wants to talk about an affordable housing plan that he has, but he’s all about relationships, so he wants to have a conversation before running through staff,” Offinger explained to City Hall aides in an email.

Before he could even begin fundraising to support the Campaign for One New York, the mayor was instructed by the city’s ethics board not to raise money from people with matters pending or about to be pending before the city.

Before it was shut down, though, Campaign for One New York routinely collected donations from people with business at City Hall. And if someone was a big donor, their invitations received special attention, the emails indicate.

In January of 2014, mayoral consultant Jonathan Rosen forwarded an invitation for de Blasio to attend a Democracy Alliance conference to top aide Emma Wolfe. He copied Offinger because of the group’s ties to billionaire investor and political activist George Soros.

“Nothing bigger in the donor world than the [Democracy Alliance],” Offinger replied.

Offinger also sent City Hall officials, including former chief of staff Thomas Snyder, a list of donors for the mayor to meet with.

One of the donors on Offinger’s list was Joseph Dussich, who had long sought city contracts for his mint-scented trash bags, but only received one after donating $100,000 to Campaign for One New York. A spokesman for the mayor declined to comment on whether the mayor spoke with Dussich.

In 2016, the mayor’s fundraising apparatus caught the attention of federal authorities. Neither Offinger nor anyone at City Hall were ever charged in the federal inquiry into de Blasio’s fundraising, which stretched out over nearly a year. Federal prosecutors said they did not think they had found enough evidence to prosecute.

What prosecutors found, though, was a pattern of transactional behavior, acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim explained in a statement issued in March.

“We have conducted a thorough investigation into several circumstances in which Mayor de Blasio and others acting on his behalf solicited donations from individuals who sought official favors from the City, after which the Mayor made or directed inquiries to relevant City agencies on behalf of those donors,” Kim’s statement said.

The emails released by City Hall this week underscore those findings.

Offinger’s willingness to skirt the lines of favor trading came up earlier this fall, in the federal corruption case against Seabrook, when former de Blasio donor Jona Rechnitz — who served as the government’s star witness in the trial — testified that he had paid for Offinger to stay in a hotel in the Dominican Republic on a vacation.

Rechnitz’s credibility was repeatedly called into question during the course of the trial, and Seabrook was not convicted, but Offinger’s attorney did not deny Rechnitz’s claim.

“All these allegations against Ross Offinger were fully investigated for almost a year by federal and state authorities, who correctly took no action against him," Offinger’s attorney, Harlan Levy, said in a statement at the time. "Mr. Offinger acted appropriately.”

Phillips, the mayor's spokesman, said the mayor had no knowledge of the hotel room incident.

"The Mayor was not aware of it and certainly would not have approved of it," Phillips said at the time.

City Hall has never agreed to provide a list of which donors the mayor personally solicited for money. A month after Offinger sent the list of donors, in April of 2016, news leaked that de Blasio’s fundraising operation was being investigated by federal prosecutors.

The level of influence Offinger held in city government, given the fact he was never a city employee, was certainly not unique to him. De Blasio has relied, throughout the course of his first term in office, on the advice of roughly a half dozen “agents of the city” — outside advisers from his favored consulting firms whose communications with City Hall the mayor’s office fought to shield from public disclosure.

POLITICO reported this year that the powerful lobbying firm Capalino and Company also formed an unofficial layer of bureaucracy in de Blasio’s City Hall — shaping policy, raising funds for events and answering technical questions on myriad aspects of municipal government.

One email exchange shows Offinger seeking access to City Hall’s internal email server, which he was briefly granted. The mayor’s spokesman explained by saying, “He only had access during a short period during the initial transition effort.”

In the thousands of pages of emails released by City Hall this week, Offinger and other City Hall aides frequently had to be reminded by senior advisers, and occasionally the mayor himself, to at least make an attempt at drawing clear lines between city government and fundraising.

In late January of 2014, as de Blasio was preparing to release his first preliminary budget, Wolfe asked Offinger to reach out to business and real estate leaders to “discuss budget today with them to moderate/take the edge off” and “preview next round of biz ldrs.”

Offinger replied with a list of people, including Lasry’s “hedge fund guys.”

Former senior adviser Peter Ragone replied, “Can we take this off the official thread please.”