Mayor Bill de Blasio is defending a nonprofit group he created amid sharp criticism from the city's Campaign Finance Board. NY1's Josh Robin filed the following report.
It was called the Campaign for One New York, set up after the mayor took office and since disbanded.
Depending on how you look at it, the group advanced Bill de Blasio's progressive agenda or advanced his re-election efforts with donations from those eager to curry favor.
The mayor's opinion is clear.
"We were trying to help children and people who needed affordable housing," de Blasio said.
That's not quite how the Campaign Finance Board sees it. Though finding it neither illegal nor directly tied to his re-election campaign, the board says it "raises serious policy and perception issues" in accepting donations far larger than allowed for individual campaigns.
The mayor's response? He was up against bigger money.
"When those guys have no rules and no limits, and someone like me is fighting for a series of changes, that has to be accounted for," de Blasio said.
Investigators are still looking into the mayor's fundraising, which the mayor says was legal.
The issue was one of several he touched during an event to talk about the heat.
Unprompted, de Blasio raised the recent police shootings of African-Americans, growing emotional.
"We have to always wait for the facts, but when you look at those two videos, it's very hard to believe that bias was not part of the equation," he said.
There have, of course, been police shootings of unarmed African-American men here in New York. The mayor insists there are differences - namely, that they predate major re-training of the NYPD."
Finally, thepresumptive Republican nominee lashed at de Blasio with the New York Post, calling him the worst mayor in the city's history and expressing irritation de Blasio never thanked him for completing a Bronx golf course.
"I didn't think that golf course was such a good idea to begin with," de Blasio said. "Donald Trump is losing credibility by the day."
But he may be good for de Blasio's re-election bid. A few hours later, an email popped up to raise campaign contributions.