Politicker's editor Colin Campbell is reporting that the Aharonite faction of Satmar has finally decided to give its bloc votes to Brooklyn D.A. Charles J. Hynes. What the additional price for this support is, besides previously reported deals for haredi child sex abusers, is still unclear.
Brooklyn D.A. Charles J. Hynes, right, with an unidentified haredi rabbi in 1994
Politicker's editor Colin Campbell is reporting on Twitter that Brooklyn D.A. Charles J. Hynes is getting the bloc vote of the Satmar Aharonite faction, meaning the deal I reported last week has been sealed.
Hynes had vowed not to talk to the factions head, Rabbi Aharon Teitelbaum, after Teitelbaum's supporters harassed a young child sex abuse victim and Teitelbaum equated her with a prostitute.
But, desperate for votes in this hotly contested election, Hynes went back on his word.
Last week, Hynes repeatedly apologized for previously calling Satmar's harassment and abuse of child sex abuse victims "worse than the Mafia." However, nowhere in those apologizes did Hynes condemn that harassment or warn the haredi rabbis he was apologizing to that such harassment would not be tolerated.
Hynes also let three of the Satmar men who harassed the boyfriend (now husband) of the victim of Nechemya Weberman walk with probation-only sentences and allowed a fourth Satmar man – indicted on much more serious coersion and related harassment charges for harassing the same man and the victim and offering them $500,000 to flee the country and not testify against Weberman – to plead guilty in a deal that will see than man do at most six months in prison. (The judge indicated that, because the D.A. had cut such a lenient plea deal, he would probably sentence the Satmar man to a probation-only sentence.)