Mark Peters detailed a “late-night screaming call from the mayor,” and another instance where senior City Hall staff informed him the mayor and his staff were “really angry.” | AP Photo De Blasio denies trying to quash DOI investigations

Mayor Bill de Blasio said he admitted his office communicated its displeasure with Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters over the course of various probes into his administration, but denied ever trying to quash them.

“To debate what to do about findings is one hundred percent appropriate,” de Blasio said during an unrelated press conference in the Bronx on Monday.


The mayor’s comments came just days after he announced he would fire Peters, following a damning independent report into his conduct as the city's chief watchdog. On Monday, Peters issued an 11-page letter to the City Council saying the mayor's move was politically motivated and accused de Blasio of trying to stifle investigations.

In one example, Peters said he was summoned to meetings and calls where he was “pressured to not issue certain reports.”

He also detailed a “late-night screaming call from the mayor,” and another instance where senior City Hall staff informed him the mayor and his staff were “really angry” and wondered if he was “still a friend.”

"On several occasions the mayor and his most senior staff have expressed visible anger at me over certain DOI investigations," Peters wrote Monday. "They have requested that I not issue certain reports and when I declined to do so, they took actions to demonstrate their anger in ways that were clearly designed to be intimidating."

Peters said former First Deputy Mayor Tony Shorris called him an “asshole” when DOI was sparring with the NYPD over documents related to one of his investigations.

Shorris declined to comment.

“There are times when there are real professional discussions about specific issues and specific agencies," de Blasio said. "That is normal — but never an attempt in any way to undermine an investigation."

The power struggle between Peters and the mayor has been simmering for years but came to a head earlier this year after he seized control of the Special Commissioner of Investigation's office, a public schools watchdog. That move raised flags at City Hall when Peters fired Anastasia Coleman, then head of the agency, after she opposed his takeover. Coleman filed a whistleblower complaint, prompting an outside investigation by former prosecutor James McGovern, who concluded Peters had overstepped his authority and bullied staff.

The report formed the central justification for Peters' termination, de Blasio said, when he fired him last week.

Peters’ letter contested some of the findings outlined in the report and noted that McGovern never recommended firing him as a result of his actions. He floated the prospect of a Council hearing during which he might share information about ongoing investigations, "in the event that they are unreasonably delayed."

Council Speaker Corey Johnson's office Monday said that was unlikely. In a statement, Johnson said he was looking forward to holding a hearing on de Blasio's new candidate for the job, Margaret Garnett.

De Blasio indicated the trouble for Peters isn't over.

"I'm not going to go into the personnel process and the details. I will only say this — there continue to be questions about other actions he took," de Blasio said Monday.

"What's in the McGovern report is one set of concerns. At one point, a document was leaked that did accurately portray other concerns that had been brought to us by employees," he added, referring to a Daily News story in September that said the mayor's team was compiling "a confidential file of allegations" against Peters.

"So what's in the McGovern report to date is not the only set of complaints that we received," the mayor said.

His spokesperson, Eric Phillips, later confirmed McGovern is investigating Peters' interactions with an employee at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Phillips said the probe centers around "allegations of abuse of authority, intimidation and coercion."

According to the Daily News, a DCAS employee reported a dispute with Peters over the agency's leased office space. The article quoted the staffer recalling a conversation in which Peters said, "he has 'people with guns in the room' who could make arrests."

In another instance detailed by the News, DCAS attorney Laura Ringelheim said Peters demanded she come to his office immediately. When she said she would prefer to talk on the phone, she recalled Peters saying "he ordered her to come to his office and he was not used to being disobeyed."

He allegedly accused her of lying about the size of the office and said he and his team needed a bigger space and when the conflict was not resolved, he threatened to leak the story to reporters and accused her of "retaliating against DOI for the Investigations it was conducting into DCAS," the Daily News reported.

Peters told the News the negotiations were "contentious" but said, "I never threatened to arrest anyone. It was a difficult process."

Rosa Goldensohn contributed to this report.