Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson tapped Wolf Sender, long time district manager for Community Board 12, as his assistant to oversee Jewish affairs in Kings County.

“I will be working with the Jewish community for the District Attorney’s office,” Sender told a local Jewish blog. “I am here for whatever the DA needs. I hope to accomplish whatever I can for our kehilla.”

Sender is no stranger to the Borough Park and Flatbush Jewish community, so is it no secret that he’s a sworn loyalist to Assemblyman Dov Hikind. Sender was fired in 1999 from his job as an assistant commissioner in the Rudy Giuliani administration. According to The Daily News, Sender, who oversaw social service contracts at the Department of Youth and Community Development under Youth Commissioner Martin Oesterreich, was fired from his post because he did not provide damaging testimony at the trial of Assemblyman Dov Hikind in 1998.

Sender’s job was axed in an effort to streamline his agency, Giuliani spokeswoman Roche charged at the time.

In 2007, Sender and Assemblyman Dov Hikind were sharply criticized over the use of a religious charity run by a convicted tax evader to fund a campaign to get Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, to resign.

“The ads instructed donors to mail the checks to an address that was not the charity’s but the headquarters of Hikind’s campaign finance committee, Friends of Dov Hikind. The committee’s headquarters is also the Brooklyn residence of Wolf Sender, a longtime Hikind political associate,” The Jewish Week reported.

While he may have been considered for the job on his own merits, political observers do see Sender’s current appointment as a liaison in the Brooklyn DA’s office as conflict of interest related.

In August, Assemblyman Hikind endorsed Ken Thompson as his choice for Brooklyn DA against incumbent Joe Hynes. While Mr. Thompson lost the vote in Borough Park by a huge margin, he managed to defeat the incumbent and become the first person of color to get elected as District Attorney in a whopping landslide.

Hikind is currently under investigation by Gov. Cuomo’s appointed Moreland Commission for getting paid $65,000 Maimonides Medical Center for advertising on the assemblyman’s weekly radio show, and failing to report it. Hikind later amended his financial statements after inquiries from the online business publication Crain’s.

By Executive Order issued on July 2, 2013, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo established the Commission to investigate public corruption in the State of New York. The commission is co-chaired by Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, and attorney Milton Williams, Jr. of New York City. The recommendations by the Moreland Commission are believed to be handed over to local District Attorneys, Albany insider say.

The District Attorney in Brooklyn, obviously, is Ken Thompson.

Sender’s closeness with Hikind was highly displayed in his son Yoni’s comment following Wolf’s appointment. “Congrats to my dear friend and somewhat almost second dad, Wolf Sender on his new position in the Office of Ken Thompson. Our new DA of Brooklyn. Besides being one the nicest people you can ever know, he will be an unbelievable asset to all of Brooklyn because of his integrity, honesty, and principles,” Yoni Hikind wrote Saturday night on Facebook.

(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)