The following is via WCBSTV:

The Rev. Al Sharpton is speaking out a day after a report claimed the civil rights leader assisted with a joint FBI-NYPD investigation for four years.

As 1010 WINS reported, it’s been known for more than 25 years that Sharpton once helped the FBI get the goods on the Genovese crime family. The Smoking Gun website said Monday that it obtained hundreds of pages of secret court filings and FBI memos providing new details about Sharpton’s relationship with the feds.

The report said Sharpton acted as a confidential informant and secretly recorded conversations with the mob by using a bugged briefcase.

Sharpton said the story exaggerates his role and that he only asked the FBI to investigate the crime family after receiving threats.

The FBI “came in 1982, ’83, after Don King tried to entrap me in a drug deal that didn’t work,” Sharpton told WCBS 880′s Rich Lamb. “Then seven months later, when I was threatened by members of the mob because I was saying that a lot of concerts should be going to black artists, and I went after them. I was threatened. I called these FBI guys back, since some of the guys were from California, and told them these are the kind of things they ought to be investigating.”

He said of The Smoking Gun: “They know that President Obama is speaking at my convention this week and (U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder is speaking, and they’re just trying to get some attention, because at the end of the day, I’m not accused of committing a crime. So are you saying it’s scandalous for me to help the good guys? It’s crazy.”

(Source: WCBSTV)