#Prison-bound Sheldon Silver threatens to punch out Post photographer

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Sheldon Silver making a fist at a New York Post photographer today.
Rashid Umar Abbasi

Crooked ex-pol Sheldon Silver almost added assault to his criminal record on Monday evening — when he blew his stack at a Post photographer.

The prison-bound former state Assembly speaker emerged from his apartment building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side shortly after 6 p.m. and recognized the shutterbug from past encounters.

“Get away from me! You have enough photographs!” he said from behind a safety mask.

The disgraced Democrat — who’s set to start serving a 6-1/2-year sentence for corruption on Wednesday — then balled up his plastic-gloved right hand into a fist and threatened to take a swing.

“I’m gonna punch you in your mouth!” he said.

“You have enough pictures! I’m gonna break your camera!”

At that point, Silver’s son, Edward Silver, pulled up in a gray Toyota Camry and managed to pacify his pop.

“Dad! Dad! Calm down!” Edward said.

But Silver, 76, couldn’t resist getting in one last dig at the journalist — as well as New York’s favorite tabloid.

“You’re a scumbag and the newspaper you work for!” he said while getting into the car.

Despite the mistreatment, the photographer politely helped the aging felon shut the passenger-side door, prompting thanks from both father and son.

The men drove away, only to return about 25 minutes later, with Edward hopping into a parked Chrysler Sebring and pulling out of the space, and Silver manueuvering the Camry into it.

Asked when he planned to leave for prison, Silver cryptically replied, “I left yesterday,” then went back into his building.

Silver spent more than five years battling charges of fraud, exortion and money laundering following his blockbuster, 2015 arrest in a pair of schemes that netted him nearly $4 million in bribes and kickbacks.

He avoided prison by appealing his jury conviction later that year, and again by mounting another appeal after he was convicted again in 2018.

But justice was finally served when Manhattan federal Judge Valerie Caproni sentenced him for a third time last month and ordered him to report to prison despite defense claims that he could contract a deadly case of the coronavirus there.

“This was corruption pure and simple,” Caproni said.

“The time, however, has now come for Mr. Silver to pay the piper.”

Silver’s lawyer, James Loonam, didn’t return an email seeking comment.