Cops for a second day combed the Upper East Side apartment Mondayof high-profile lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who has been accused of rape by a top administrator at The Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
The woman, who is not being identified, was allegedly raped inside Rubenstein’s East 64th Street apartment following Sharpton’s 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons on Wednesday night, a law enforcement official and several authorities said.
Rubenstein’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman, meanwhile, said in a statement yesterday that Rubenstein denies the accusations.
Yesterday afternoon, detectives searched the apartment where the alleged rape took place and carried out a king-size mattress wrapped in brown paper as well as more than a dozen evidence bags. Several of the bags were very large, about four-feet long.
Sharpton’s birthday “Party For a Cause,” was attended by celebrities and high-powered officials, including Aretha Franklin, Spike Lee and Mayor Bill de Blasio.
No charges had been filed in the incident as of Monday evening.
Rubenstein, 70, has made his mark over the years representing high-profile cases against the NYPD and in his affinity for news conferences. Some of his high-profile settlements have included $7.15 million in the shooting death of Sean Bell by police and $8.75 million in the sexual assault of Abner Louima by police.
“Mr. Rubenstein is one of the city’s most successful and respected attorneys,” Brafman said in a statement.
“He denies any criminal conduct whatsoever in connection with this matter and we are confident that when the investigation is completed, it will be closed without the filing of any criminal charges.”
Meanwhile, the family of Eric Garner, who hired Rubenstein to represent them, met with Sharpton yesterday to discuss their next course of action. Garner died in July from an alleged police chokehold in Staten Island after he was accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
The family met with Sharpton and the National Action Network’s general council, Michael Hardy, to discuss the allegations against Rubenstein and decide if they should allow him to continue to represent them, the organization’s spokeswoman Jacky Johnson said in a statement.
They will announce their decision on Saturday at Sharpton’s Action rally, she said.
For his part, Mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking at an unrelated news conference Monday, said he isn’t concerned about the future of the Garner case because he simply doesn’t know for a fact what happened yet.
“I think the allegations are very serious and obviously troubling,” he said. “I want to really be careful here about the fact that there has to be an investigation and there has to be due process and that’s true in every case. We don’t know what happened and we have to let that play out.”
On Sunday, Sharpton told the Daily News he will push on with the Garner case regardless of the outcome of the allegations against Rubenstein.
