SLAP-HAPPY

Man Who Patted Giuliani on Back Wants $2M for Wrongful Arrest

“I did not commit any crime. I expressed my opinion,” Daniel Gill said.

The man arrested after lightly touching Rudy Giuliani on the back in a Staten Island supermarket wants it known that he never assaulted the former mayor of New York—and, besides that, he wants $2 million. On Thursday, Daniel Gill filed a notice of claim against the city over the June incident, which saw him tap Giuliani and call him a “scumbag” in a ShopRite. Gill spent 24 hours behind bars over the confrontation, and briefly faced a felony assault charge, which was later reduced to third-degree assault. “I did not commit any crime. I expressed my opinion,” Gill told the New York Daily News on Thursday. “I think 90 percent of the people who saw Rudy Giuliani would have the desire to call Rudy Giuliani a ‘scumbag.’ I did not commit any crime... I have no regrets.” Gill alleges in his Thursday notice that the subsequent publicity made him “a target of falsehoods, defamations and threats,” and claims he was both falsely arrested and wrongfully imprisoned.