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https://nypost.com/2022/07/10/bill-de-blasio-walks-alone-after-giving-up-nypd-bodyguards/
Bill De Blasio walks alone after giving up NYPD bodyguards
Now that he’s running for Congress, ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio has given up his NYPD bodyguards — after years of abusing the taxpayer-funded security, The Post has learned.
The seven cops who continued to safeguard de Blasio after he left office Dec. 31 were reassigned July 1, law-enforcement sources said.
De Blasio could have asked the Police Department to extend his protection, sources said. But he likely decided against it given the optics of a former mayor getting taxpayer-funded bodyguards while the rest of the residents in the violence-wracked city are left to fend for themselves, a source said.
“It doesn’t look good for him to have bodyguards while the city is getting shot up,” the source said.
The source noted that there were no threats against the former mayor “besides the millions of New Yorkers who hate him and would like to punch him in the face.”
De Blasio, who is $2.5 million in debt, also may have had to reimburse the city at some point for the security coverage, given his new political bid.
A Brooklyn neighbor who spotted de Blasio walking alone to the gym recently said, “He looks like a lost soul.
“No one even said anything to him, a far cry from six months ago,” the neighbor added.
De Blasio’s predecessor, billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, kept his security detail in place after he left office by having the cops on the publicly paid assignment retire from the force and then hiring them on his own, said sources familiar with the situation.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s bodyguards continued protecting him at taxpayer expense after he left office in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, but it’s unclear for how long. The cops later retired and were hired by Giuliani to continue guarding him, sources said.
De Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, lost her security detail Dec. 31, sources said.
During his eight years as mayor, de Blasio regularly had his bodyguards drive him from Gracie Mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side to the Prospect Park YMCA in Brooklyn on weekday mornings for light workouts of stretching and riding a stationary bicycle while watching TV.
Official schedules obtained by The Post in 2020 revealed that the entire routine took around 2 and 1/2 hours, with de Blasio finally arriving at City Hall around 10:30 a.m.
mayor squandered nearly $320,000 worth of city resources by using his security detail for “political purposes” during his quixotic 2020 presidential campaign.
The report also faulted de Blasio for having cops chauffeur his kids around, including helping daughter Chiara de Blasio move from a Brooklyn apartment to Gracie Mansion in 2018 and shuttling son Dante de Blasio to and from Yale University.
The city Conflicts of Interest Board ordered de Blasio to reimburse the city $319,794 — an amount that could have increased if the former mayor continued being protected by the NYPD as he campaigns in the Democratic primary for the newly redrawn 10th Congressional District seat.
The district’s crowded field of candidates includes US Rep. Mondaire Jones, who now represents parts of Westchester and Rockland counties, Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou (D-Lower Manhattan) and Daniel Goldman, former lead counsel for House Democrats during the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
De Blasio hasn’t paid for the cost of his presidential-campaign security pending an appeal of the COIB’s ruling.
A COIB rep said Friday that confidentiality rules prohibit the board from “disclosing its communications with public servants or even acknowledging whether such communications have occurred.”
The former mayor has racked up around $2.5 million in debt that also includes $1.2 million in mortgages on his family’s Park Slope home, which recently underwent extensive renovations, and $434,000 in legal bills tied to corruption probes by federal and state authorities.
No charges were filed against de Blasio regarding the probes, with then-acting Manhattan US Attorney Joon Kim citing “the particular difficulty in proving criminal intent in corruption schemes where there is no evidence of personal profit.”
After leaving Gracie Mansion, de Blasio and McCray moved into a hotel suite at the swanky New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge, where they stayed until returning to their remodeled home last month.
It’s unclear how much they spent on the lodging, and the management of the hotel, which is owned by supporters of the former mayor, has declined to say if the couple received any discount on its rates, which start at around $600 a night for a suite.
On Friday, de Blasio was spotted by The Post walking alone on a Brooklyn sidewalk, holding a cellphone attached to earbuds he was wearing.
The former mayor seemed largely oblivious to his surroundings, at one point walking in semicircles while looking at his feet and apparently engrossed in a conversation.
Later, when asked by The Post to discuss the loss of his security detail, de Blasio declined to comment, citing the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier in the day.
A source in the former mayor’s camp said the NYPD makes the decision on whether he needs a publicly funded security detail, not de Blasio.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doi/press-releases/2021/October/DOI_Report_re_Security_Detail.pdf
New York City
Department of Investigation
Mayor de Blasio’s Security Detail
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/georgia-guidestones-time-capsule-mystery
Dig for Georgia Guidestones time capsule adds to mystery
The promise of a trove buried underneath the now-destroyed Georgia Guidestones appears to be a bust.
The mysterious structure unveiled in 1980 was demolished Wednesday after an explosion that caused extensive damage, but there was lingering intrigue about the possibility of a time capsule.
A slab on-site had two unfinished lines that said, "Placed six feet below this spot on …" that was "to be opened on," leading to a search by county officials.
With the help of a tape measure, Elbert County Road Department officials used an excavator to dig 6 feet into the ground. However, officials said they did not find anything but dirt, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
“There was no hole. There was no nothing. It was a slab of concrete on top of dirt,” said police Lt. Shane Allen, per the Epoch Times.
Much remains unanswered about the Georgia Guidestones, dubbed "America's Stonehenge," including who built the structure roughly 100 miles east of Atlanta.
The Elberton Granite Finishing Corporation said the 19-foot set of granite monoliths, which had stood for several decades, served as an astronomical calendar and were engraved with a 10-part list of instructions regarding the conservation of mankind in various languages.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation says "unknown individuals" detonated an explosive device on Wednesday that destroyed a "large portion" of the structure and released surveillance footage showing the blast and a car leaving the area. The rest of the structure was demolished for "safety reasons," and the GBI is seeking tips as it investigates the blast.
Some believe the structure had satanic significance, including former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor, who vowed to tear down the structure if she was elected to "bring the Satanic Regime to its knees."
Adding to the spectacle after the Georgia Guidestones got destroyed were online pranksters who claimed officials recovered a time capsule containing items from the late 1970s and early 1980s, including a signed issue of Playboy magazine featuring Burt Reynolds, a Peterbilt emblem, an 8-track of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, and Quaaludes.