Jimmy Breslin is giggling in his grave as the New York City mayor’s alleged attempt to rake in some cash and goodies in return for ignoring a building code violation has morphed into a national scandal.

The late great NYC newspaper reporter, who told us of goofy tales of gangsters who couldn’t shoot straight and why the Mets couldn’t play baseball, would be in his glory.

Why?

Well, it began in the tradition of NYC politics going back to the last two centuries of corrupt Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed.

Da Mayor, an ex-cop, allegedly tried to inflate his retirement package with some cash ($100,000) and other goodies courtesy of Turkish counselor officials by letting them open a new building over the objections of the fire department. Since the 9-11 tragedy, the NYC fire department has been very leery about sending their firefighters into unsafe buildings.

Da Mayor’s lawyer said it was just a favor, a courtesy. Politicians do it all the time. No big deal, right?

The indictment also  alleged that Da Mayor also obtained $10 million in matching public campaign funds by gaming the system.

I guess someone blew the whistle, the FBI got a search warrant for the Da Mayor’s official residence, and, Bingo, the feds indicted him.

Fast forward to today. The POTUS and his bulldog immigration Honcho wanted Hizzoner to order NYPD to help them deport millions of undocumented illegal immigrants. But, current law bars the city from helping the feds arrest undocumented immigrants unless they are crooks and have a detainer issued by a judge.

This law stymied POTUS' promised immigration crackdown, so they huddled up and figured out a workaround. A new big-shot justice department lawyer (who used to represent POTUS in some of his criminal matters, (allegedly, again) sat down with the NYC U.S. Attorney, Da Mayor, and his lawyer, and offered to drop the federal charges if City Hall would play ball with immigration cops.

Then there was another oops. The acting U.S. attorney is a conservative Federalist Society member recently appointed by POTUS. She once clerked for the late uber-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia. When she looked over the deal, she balked and resigned. She told the new Attorney General her participation would be unethical and illegal. She said it was a quid pro quo deal arranged by the White House.

“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward (Da Mayor's) opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” she wrote. By the way, the big shot justice department official, the guy who was running the show, confiscated the notes other lawyers took of what happened in the meeting.

So, the big shot justice department lawyer reassigned Da Mayor's case to the Washington DOJ ethics branch. FYI - This was the very same DOJ ethical branch that approved the indictment in the first place.

Faced with this dilemma, a reversal of the deal they earlier approved, four ethics department lawyers resigned. Friday afternoon, another NY assistant US attorney resigned (bringing the total number of lawyer resignations to seven). He said any lawyer who signed the pleading to dismiss the charges against Da Mayor would be a “fool or a coward.” According to the AP, that lawyer is an Army veteran who earned two Bronze medals serving in Iraq as a Special Forces troop commander. He graduated from Harvard Law School at the top of his class in 2010 and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.

And for some reason, the participants put all the gory details down in writing, citing chapter and verse. You can look it up.

Thus, a simple NYC political courtesy favor is a national scandal. Now, some unlucky DOJ lawyer will have to go before a federal judge and explain why the deal seven lawyers resigned over as being bogus, is now kosher.

I always claim to be a good reporter, not a soothsayer, but I will go out on a limb in this case. Based on my knowledge of the federal judiciary, I predict the lawyer forced to stand tall before a stern federal judge and explain this affair had better be wearing asbestos underwear.

Meanwhile, Elon's muskian myrmidons are puttering around the federal agencies looking for waste, fraud and abuse. So far they are triggering wholesale firings, a move likely to ruffle the feathers of Congress and the important voters back home. Wait until Midwestern farmers find out USAID is not going to buy tons of their grain, or the veterans discover their needed services will be cut because the VA is told to fire 1,000 case workers.

Oh yes, in other news, the administration banned the AP from official events because they refused POTUS’ order to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Does anyone remember the time Congress created Freedom Fries?

Everythig is still just fine.