Mayor Adams suggested Tuesday that former Mayor Rudy Giuliani falsely reported a crime — and that the Staten Island prosecutor probing assault charges against the man Giuliani accused should instead turn his attention to the former mayor.
“I think the district attorney should — he has the wrong person,” Adams said at an unrelated press conference in Harlem. “To falsely report a crime is a crime. If that video wasn’t there, then this person would have been charged with punching the former mayor. He’d have been charged with all these offenses that did not materialize.”
Adams was referring to the now-widely viewed video that shows Daniel Gill tap Giuliani on the back while at a Staten Island supermarket where he was campaigning on Sunday with his son, Andrew, who is running for governor.
The video depicts Gill — who works at the supermarket, but is now suspended pending termination — patting or slapping Giuliani on the back. It then appears that the two exchange words.
Giuliani has claimed that Gill “hit me to knock me down” and has said it felt like a bullet or as “if a boulder hit me.”
“If that doesn’t merit jail time in New York, we’re in the Wild, Wild West,” he said Monday. “It hurt tremendously. I did not know what it was. I had no idea what it was. And all of a sudden I heard someone yell something at me, dirty curse words.”
But the current mayor clearly wasn’t impressed with his predecessor’s description, especially in light of the video depicting it.
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