Emails Detail Hasidic Power Broker’s Direct Line To De Blasio’s Office

Moishe Indig and New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio. Image by Facebook/Getty Images/Forward Montage

By Ari Feldman November 30, 2017

A new trove of emails shows how a Hasidic rabbi and power broker from Brooklyn received five-star treatment from New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and his staff after hosting a fundraiser for them, the New York Post reported.

Moishe Indig, a Brooklyn landlord and member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, had direct access to De Blasio’s personal email, and was ushered into one-on-one sit-downs with city commissioners by the mayor’s staff. Indig boasted about the all-access pass he received after hosting a fundraiser for De Blasio in 2013, and claimed to be instrumental in securing votes from De Blasio from a major Hasidic bloc.

Indig denied any wrongdoing in statements to the Post.

“As a community leader, I interact regularly with city, state [and] federal officials to advocate on behalf of the community,” he said.

De Blasio has been subjected to probes over whether he made quid pro quo arrangements with his campaign supporters. In March, Jona Rechnitz, a prominent real-estate investor, claimed in court documents that he exchanged campaign donations for favors with De Blasio.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO