Hours after FBI agents armed with search warrants raided his home and office, Edward D. Mullins resigned as the powerful president of New York City’s Sergeants Benevolent Association.
A statement emailed Tuesday, Oct. 5, to the police union’s roughly 11,000 members conceded Mullins was the target of the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, although officials declined to say exactly why Mullins is a suspect.
“Given the severity of this matter and the uncertainty of its outcome, the SBA Executive Board has requested that President Mullins resign from his position as SBA President,” the letter states. “This evening, President Mullins has agreed to tender his resignation as president of the SBA.”
Details on the search warrants remain under seal in federal court.
Sources told Fox News that Mullins allegedly is under investigation for misappropriation of union funds, although association spokesperson Robert Mladinich wouldn’t confirm that to Coffee or Die Magazine.
The US attorney’s office declined to comment. FBI spokesperson Adrienne Senatore told Coffee or Die only that Mullins is not in federal custody.
Calls and emails sent to the normally outspoken Mullins also went unanswered.
The union’s statement to members urged them to grant Mullins “the presumption of innocence” while the probe continues.
Mullins’ fall was as swift as it was surprising. He’d helmed the nation’s fifth-largest police union since 2002, a long and swaggering tenure marked by bombast directed at top city leaders and critics of cops.
Ed Mullins, who famously called me a "first-class whore" for daring to ask questions about the @SBANYPD, just got a first-class raid from the FBI. https://t.co/MgHwNdJ3g8
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) October 5, 2021
Last year, he took to Twitter to call City Councilman Ritchie Torres a “first class whore” after Torres asked if cops were staging a slowdown strike during a rise in gun violence.
Two months earlier, he’d shared on Twitter an arrest report on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, after she was nabbed during a protest over the death of George Floyd.
Those stunts became part of a dossier for a disciplinary hearing aimed at Mullins, who before his resignation drew paychecks as both a police sergeant and a union boss.
During a Tuesday press conference, the lame-duck mayor denied having prior knowledge of the FBI raids but still took a parting shot at Mullins.
“I think a lot of what he has done has been really, really destructive, especially in the middle of a crisis where we’re trying to unify and we’re trying to get people through together,” de Blasio said. “I think he’s been a divisive voice, but that doesn’t cause me to feel anything in this situation, because I don’t know what’s happening.”
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