BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Jacob Schwartz, once a rising star in the New York Democratic Party, was sentenced Wednesday to one to three years in prison for possessing child pornography. The judge’s sentence was part of a plea deal reached after Schwartz, 31, admitted guilt on May 28 to one count of promoting sexual performance by a child. Schwartz will also be on the mandatory sex-offender registry for a minimum of 20 years.
He had additionally been charged with one count of possessing a sexual performance by a child under age 16, but he did not admit guilt to that as part of the plea deal. Jacob Schwartz was arrested in May 2017, in what his father, Greenwich Village District Leader Arthur Schwartz, called a “personal tragedy” for him. According to police, the younger Schwartz’s laptop computer contained “over 3,000 images and 89 videos depicting young nude females between the approximate ages of 6 months and 16 years old, engaging in sexual conduct…on an adult male.” Jacob Schwartz is an alumni of the Village Community School. At the time of his arrest, he was living in Murray Hill, and employed as a computer programmer analyst with the city’s Department of Design and Construction, where he worked for Build It Back, a Superstorm Sandy recovery and rebuilding-assistance program. He was also the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the Downstate region vice president of the New York State Young Democrats. Arthur Schwartz had previously told this paper that he did not expect his son would wind up going to jail. “I had hoped he wasn’t going to serve time,” he said this Friday, noting the “modern trend” is against prison in such cases. But, he added, that Jacob probably was sentenced, partly, “because of who I am and who he was.” Schwartz was the New York counsel for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign, and is a prominent New York City union attorney. He said Jacob will serve his time in a state prison. Arthur Schwartz said the New York Post, in its coverage, initially made a point of stressing that Jacob was a “de Blasio staffer,” when in fact he was a merely one employee within the administration. He blamed the Post’s “conservative” politics for its ongoing coverage of the story, saying that it would not merit mention otherwise. The tabloid likes to use the term “Democratic Party insider” for him and his son, he noted. “The nature of what Jacob was charged with, in the end, most cases wouldn’t be covered,” he said of the major media. The Post also reported that Arthur Schwartz shoved one of its photographers at Friday’s sentencing and screamed at him, “Get the f— away from me!” Schwartz said it was Steve Hirsch, and that the photographer was blocking his way when Schwartz and his family members — including Jacob’s mother and others — were trying to exit an elevator and get to the sentencing.
“The elevator door opened and he was about to take pictures of my family who were there, and I pushed him out of the way,” Schwartz said. Schwartz claimed that Hirsch also made a provocative remark to him. “He was harassing me,” he charged. Schwartz said that on his way back out, he was escorted to the stairs by a court officer who kept the shutterbug from getting a good shot. Hirsch is a longtime East Villager who has covered the crusty punks in Tompkins Square Park on his “Crustypunks” blog, among others. “No comment,” Hirsch responded by e-mail when asked to respond to Schwarz’s accusations. “Nobody else [besides the Post] covered any of this stuff — except The Villager,” Schwartz said. “I don’t think it’s an important story,” he added. “I think 14th St. is more important.” He was referring to his lawsuit on behalf of Village and Chelsea block associations against the city’s efforts to ram through a “busway” plan for 14th St. that would ban cars from the major crosstown street daily from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The judge on that case had asked the Department of Transportation to submit paperwork by Friday to justify the plan, which would be the first of its kind in New York City. “I’ll call you when I get the papers [from D.O.T.] today,” Schwartz told this paper. He said he also plans to file a separate lawsuit next week against the New York City Transit Authority for eliminating more than a dozen bus stops on the M14 route as part of implementing Select Bus Service. His plaintiff on that suit will be Disabled in Action, a group representing disabled advocates. Although they represent the same district, Assemblymember Deborah Glick and Schwartz are bitter political foes. Two years ago, when the story broke of Jacob Schwartz’s arrest, Glick told this paper that the focus should be on the victims. “It’s a terrible circumstance for the Schwartz family,” Glick said at that time, “although I reserve my compassion for the obvious victims, who are all these young girls who have been sold or trafficked and whose images have been proliferated around the Web. Those are the real victims and that is the really horrible part of this.” Glick did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
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