Mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday asserted his control over the $2.475 billion deal to sell the Mets to Steve Cohen — saying he wouldn’t bow to Major League Baseball’s Friday deadline or share his personal opinion on the hedge funder.
“It’s not appropriate to be commenting on the people involved,” Hizzoner said at his daily press briefing Thursday. “The Law Department is handling this. I’m not going to issue personal views in the middle of that kind of review.”
The mayor also declined to discuss the specifics of his phone call to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this month — when sources told The Post de Blasio outright said that he opposed the billionaire’s purchase of the Mets.
Sources said de Blasio has been trying to halt the behemoth deal from taking place by weaponizing the Law Department, which is reviewing the sale that involves city-owned land.
“I want to respect a private conversation,” de Blasio told reporters Thursday about the call. “I reached out to Commissioner Manfred simply to let him know that we had this legal responsibility and we were pursuing it and doing due diligence.”
De Blasio reiterated that his decision on whether to sign off on the deal — seen more as a rubber stamp — will come “very soon.”
“We understand MLB has their process but we have our process,” he said. “It was just important to me to just let him know that we have a legal obligation and were going to fulfill it.”
But what the mayor has said publicly and what he has told people inside city government appear to be at odds, and multiple sources have told The Post the mayor has been pushing the city’s lawyers to find a way to halt Cohen’s sale by using a clause buried in the Citi Field lease.
“The ‘due diligence’ line is bulls–t,” a source familiar with City Hall told The Post Wednesday. “He’s told [Major League] Baseball he doesn’t want Cohen and he’s told his Law Department to find a way to stop it.”
