"It’s unknown whether De Niro appears on the list. But that doesn’t mean that he can rest easy."
"While catching up with Robert De Niro the other day, it occurred to me that poor Bobby is on a collision course with New York City’s Mamdani junta.
"Though it’s not well known to the public. De Niro is something of a real estate magnate in Manhattan. He has poured much of his acting fees into property purchases in the downtown area, including a restaurant, a hotel, and a number of commercial buildings in the TriBeCa neighborhood. (One writer years ago went so far as to claim that he owned almost every commercial building in TriBeCa, but even though it’s a small neighborhood, that’s unlikely.)
"It appears that the bulk of De Niro’s net worth of $500 million or thereabouts consists of real property.
"That makes him a target of Mamdani’s campaign against bourgeois property owners exploiting Manhattan’s housing-starved proletariat.
"In particular, he appears to be in serious violation of the new pied-à-terre law, aimed at property owners who own city apartments while having a primary residence elsewhere. Since De Niro owns a house at Montauk, an estate north of the city, and another apartment in LA, that description appears to fit him like a glove.
"The pied-à-terre tax has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent weeks. Mamdani held what amounted to a rally in front of billionaire Ken Griffin’s apartment, implicitly scapegoating Griffin and putting him in the sights of unbalanced members of his movement only two years after the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
"The Mamdani administration’s Department of Finance also released a database containing the names of 960,000 city property owners that the junta views as enemies of the people. These are all individuals subject to action under the pied-à-terre law. Strangely, all this is occurring at the same time that Mamdani is begging corporate CEOs, many of whom must have been named on the list, to help bail out the city." . . .
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