#Jona Rechnitz wants judge to step aside from his bribery case

A former fundraiser for Mayor de Blasio — convicted of ferrying a $60,000 bribe in a Ferragamo bag to the head of the city Corrections Officers union — is demanding that a new judge decide how much restitution he must pay.

Jona Rechnitz became a key witness for prosecutors and ultimately testified in three trials, including one which brought down Norman Seabrook, head of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, on bribery charges.

Seabrook was convicted of fraud for funneling $20 million in COBA cash to a hedge fund, Platinum Partners, that eventually became defunct.

Rechnitz, who helped facilitate the deal, was sentenced in December, 2019 to five months behind bars and five months home confinement.

He was also ordered to pay $10 million in restitution to COBA.

But now Rechntiz, who had yet to start serving his sentence, says there’s no way Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein should be allowed to rule on the restitution portion of his case — because the jurist is intimately familiar with an employee of Platinum Partners.

The employee, Andrew Kaplan, is the son of Hellerstein’s close personal friend, who died a decade ago. When the father died, Hellerstein wrote in court papers, he told Kaplan he would discuss any problems Kaplan may have “as if I were his father.”

The judge, citing his ties to Kaplan, has already recused himself from a different case involving Platinum Partners, but has declined to step away from Rechnitz.

Rechnitz’s lawyers insisted in a Dec. 21 letter to Hellerstein that their client dealt directly with Kaplan to facilitate bribes, and Hellerstein could “entertain a bias against Mr. Rechnitz for having involved the court’s ‘son’ in a bribery scheme.”

“The question is whether this court, based on its close, quasi-familial relationship with Kaplan, could fairly evaluate the arguments Mr. Rechnitz made regarding his culpability and make any impartial determination concerning what the proceeding ‘turns on.’ There is substantial reason to doubt it could,” they wrote.