Former Tea Partier says federal probe is act of retaliation
A former state Tea Party organizer has become a target of a federal grand-jury investigation after his newspaper ripped two prosecutors in Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bhaharas office, The Post has learned.
A front-page story that appeared in the free, acid-tongued weekly Westchester Guardian on March 27 called the prosecutors unethical and corrupt hypocrites.
The papers owner, Tea Party honcho and strip-club mogul Selim Sam Zherka, even proudly admits to hiring a direct-mailing company, Promail USA, to tweak one of the prosecutors, Elliot Jacobson, by sending roughly 15,000 extra copies of the edition to registered Democrats in Jacobsons hometown of Greenburgh. Bhahara is a Democrat.
Tens of thousands of other copies also were distributed through newspaper kiosks in Westchester.
Bhahara then signed off on a May 6 subpoena ordering reps from Promail of Yonkers to appear before a grand jury in White Plains federal court and produce all documents, including all electronic data related to dealings with the paper from March 15 to April 15.
Its unclear what exactly the subpoena is going after the feds refuse to comment.
But Zherka told The Post, The timing is no coincidence. Its obviously retaliation for printing a story that pissed the feds off.
And it is a clear attack on the First Amendment and free speech, he said.
The Guardian article accused Jacobson and another White Plains-based federal prosecutor, Perry Carbone of assisting the Internal Revenue Service in an ongoing tax-fraud probe of Zherka.
The report said their help was a favor to Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, a fellow Democrat who is also routinely verbally attacked by the Guardian.
See more here:
Former Tea Partier says federal probe is act of retaliation