El Paso ex-con Hector Medina sent the lying former congressman text messages and a video last year purporting to be a man with a particular set of skills that could make Santos’ criminal charges vanish, Brooklyn federal prosecutors allege in a criminal complaint.

He also made a $1 million offer to an unnamed California actor convicted of multiple felonies in May. A source with knowledge of the situation identified the actor as Danny Masterson, who was convicted of raping two women.

Medina is also accused of similar offers to a musician arrested in June and an athlete’s relative who was busted in May.

Calling himself “Mike Soto,” Medina is accused of sending an unsolicited video message to Santos in July, while the Republican elected from a district including parts of Nassau County and Queens was still in Congress.

“You don’t know me but, I wanted you to see a face and trust me on what I’m about to tell you. I work with prosecutors and, uh, judges throughout the United States and I want to give you the opportunity to offer my services. I was contacted by some people to reach out to you and see if you wanted to cut a deal,” he said, according to the feds.

“Uh, this only stands for today. If you’re interested, I can get everything dropped, evidence that is on you removed, disappeared. Reach out to me if you’re interested. It’s simple yes or no. Thank you.”

He then sent Santos several text messages, asking him if he had the wrong number, then offering, “I can get all the charges dropped” and “All I need is for you or someone to wire 900k,” according to the feds

In a string of texts, he said, “Once this is done I’ll take care of the rest. I’m the real deal don’t let doubt come in the way of you getting this dismissed,” the feds allege.

In August, Medina persisted, according to the feds, sending more texts like, “I know you see my messages,” and recording another video, boasting, “I’m on your team. If you don’t want the help, at least connect me with people that do. Um, you know, I’m really good at what I do. I am a genius. I am a wizard when it comes to things like this.”

Santos, who lied about nearly every aspect of his life during his successful run for office in 2022, was ousted from the job in December. He faces multiple fraud and identity theft charges, including allegations he stole people’s identities and made unauthorized charges on campaign donors’ credit cards to buy designer clothes and pay personal debts.

The complaint doesn’t identify Santos by name, but rather as Individual-1. It explicitly describes him as New York’s 3rd Congressional District representative from Jan. 7 to Dec. 1.

In June, Medina sent messages to the California actor identified as Masterson and to Masterson’s then-spouse, said the feds.

The message allegedly said: “My name is Mike and I’m working with the people affiliated with your case. I can get the case thrown out or a reduced sentence very low but my people are asking for a $1 million dollar fee.”

When law enforcement came calling on Dec. 14, Medina admitted the scam, saying he searched the internet looking for people in trouble, and that he needed the cash to pay off more than $100,000 in gambling debts, according to the complaint.

Medina — who has a history of fraud and theft convictions in Texas, according to the feds — is charged with wire fraud and was expected to appear in federal court in El Paso, Texas, on Wednesday.

“I’m currently in my initial phases of my representation of Mr. Medina in this matter. Mr. Medina eagerly anticipates confronting the allegations against him through the formal legal process,” his lawyer Joseph Veith said Wednesday.

Medina’s case will be transferred to Brooklyn Federal Court at a later date.

Gov. Hochul is deploying 750 members of the Guard and 250 state and MTA police officers to subway stations to inspect passengers’ bags following a spate of violent incidents across the system.

“No one heading to their job or to visit family or to go to a doctor’s appointment should worry that the person sitting next to them possesses a deadly weapon,” Hochul said Wednesday beside MTA Chairman Janno Lieber in front of a giant system map at the MTA’s Rail Control Center.

“They shouldn’t worry about whether someone’s going to brandish a knife or a gun.”

The random checks will fall well short of the body scans and pat downs of airport-level security. Straphangers are already familiar with how this will work — cops at tables performing random bag checks have appeared at subway turnstiles from time to time in the 22 years since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Transit officials said the state support would simply allow for more such spot checks throughout the system, and that the National Guard, MTA police or other state law enforcement won’t be patrolling the trains.

The additional law enforcement power is one of a slate of state actions Hochul hopes will reduce crime underground — a “five-point plan [to] rid our subways of violent offenders and protect all commuters and transit workers,” as she put it.

“I am sending a message to all New Yorkers — I will not stop working to keep you safe and restore your peace of mind whenever you walk through those turnstiles,” she said

Besides the bag checks, the five initiatives include a $20 million plan to beef up the number of clinical teams responding to people in mental distress on subways from two to 10 systemwide.

Another of Hochul’s five initiatives is her support for the MTA’s plan to install surveillance cameras inside conductor and train-operator cabs. That initiative is a direct response to the slashing of MTA conductor Alton Scott, who narrowly survived a random assault last week when he stuck his head out of his cab as his train stopped at a Brooklyn subway station.

“If a camera had been positioned in Alton Scott’s conductor cabin last Thursday, we probably would have already apprehended the person who slashed his neck,” Hochul said.

“Today I’m directing the MTA to install cameras in every single conductor cabin, as well as [on] platforms that face the cabins,” she added.

No platform-mounted camera caught Scott’s attacker last week either.

MTA officials have stated that the station had multiple working surveillance cameras, but none were pointed at the conductor’s mid-platform position when Scott’s late-night A train pulled into the Rockaway Ave. station in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Transit brass declined to comment Wednesday on how many other stations might need upgrades to their camera coverage, citing security concerns.

Transport Workers Union Local 100 has long opposed putting cameras in conductor and operator cabs, citing privacy concerns. The MTA said last week it will install the cameras anyway.

A Local 100 spokesman said Wednesday that the union will support the installation so long as the cameras are solely for safety purposes, and are not used to support disciplinary cases against union members.

Hochul’s fourth initiative is proposed legislation to ban anyone convicted of an assault on transit from the system for three years. Currently the law allows a ban only on those who are convicted of assaulting a transit worker.

Her fifth initiative is improved coordination between MTA officials and district attorneys and police. That initiative will include regular meetings to discuss subway crime, the first of which is scheduled for next week.

As part of that fifth initiative, Hochul said, the MTA will hire a new “criminal justice advocate to assist the victims of crime in the system,” and develop a system to “flag recidivist offenders” to district attorneys.

NYPD brass and MTA leaders blame the uptick in crime on repeat offenders.

“One percent of subway arrestees, according to the NYPD, are responsible for well over 20% of the crime,” MTA boss Lieber said. “We need to have a collaboration with the [district attorneys] so they have that full information.”

The NYPD is fighting a 15.5% jump in felony assaults at city subway stops and trains.

Police have counted 97 such assaults in the subway system this year as of Sunday, 13 more than in the same period of 2023.

Misdemeanor assaults — slaps, punches and other relatively minor attacks — are down 3.9% for the year, with 249 misdemeanor assaults as of Sunday, 10 fewer than the 259 that had occurred by this time last year.

NYPD brass has said grand larcenies — property theft and pickpocketing — are the main thing pushing crime rates up in the subway system. Those crimes are up 17.8%, from 163 reported incidents last year to 192 this year.

There have been three homicides on the transit system so far this year, up from one this time last year.

The most recent was two weeks ago, when a man was fatally shot two weeks ago while on board a southbound B train in the Bronx.

On Tuesday, police arrested a man for allegedly stabbing a passenger onboard an uptown A train in what cops described as a hate crime.

Arrests in the system are up 45% over last year, according to police, with 3,261 arrests so far as of Sunday, up from 2,243 last year.

Earlier Wednesday, Mayor Adams — who did not join Hochul at her announcement — said NYPD officers will also be increasing bag checks in the subway system.

Neither the mayor nor transit officials would say at which stations the ramped-up bag checks will take place. An Adams administration spokesperson said there will be 94 NYPD bag screening teams deployed to 136 stations each week.

“They’re going to be a seven-day-a-week operation,” NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper said in a Wednesday morning appearance with Adams on CBS New York.

Adams said the checks will be “random” and that the Police Department won’t engage in any “profiling.”

“People who don’t want their bags checked can turn around and not enter the system,” he said.

The governor’s plan to put National Guard soldiers in the subway system was met with alarm from civil libertarians.

“This plan is whiplash inducing. The city only recently trumpeted safety data,” Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

“These heavy-handed approaches will, like stop-and-frisk, be used to accost and profile Black and Brown New Yorkers, ripping a page straight out of the Giuliani playbook,” she said, comparing Hochul to the former Republican mayor.

Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed specific concern about the use of the National Guard.

“We shouldn’t militarize the MTA when crime rates are falling and budgets are contracting,” he said in a statement.

“I fear how many New Yorkers will be wrongly arrested or hurt before we recognize that soldiers have no place on the streets of democracy.”

The NYPD has released additional pictures showing more of the 13 animals found abused and malnourished when cops executed a search warrant at the Beach 44th St. home near Norton Drive in the Rockaways at around 6 a.m. Monday.

One of the dogs, a German shepherd, was stolen from an East New York, Brooklyn, tire shop during a Jan. 25 burglary.

A man who works near the lot, which was closed Wednesday, recalled the owner’s “beautiful” dog and the burglary.

“It was night time — 3, 4 o’clock in the morning,” said the man, who asked to be identified only as Aarow. “The dog was inside the gates.”

The man said that the burglars took about $1,500 in cash from an ATM in a shed on the car lot along with the German shepherd.

Days later, the owner of the car lot had a heart attack.

“He was in the hospital a couple days, [but] he’s OK now,” Aarow said of the man. “Maybe it was the stress.”

The owner’s dog was returned after the horrifying bust, but when the dog’s owner was reunited with his emaciated pooch, he was furious.

“That’s sick to take somebody’s dog and then to treat him the way [they treated] him,” said the man. “Not even to take him home. You know what I mean? If you took him home because you like, him different story. That’s exactly why we’re puzzled.”

Members of the NYPD’s grand larceny squad searching the home for stolen goods and drugs found the 11 starving, emaciated dogs and two malnourished cats. They also uncovered quantities of heroin and fentanyl along with stolen tools and DJ equipment.

The animals were found in “deplorable conditions” and given to the ASPCA for treatment.

When detectives entered the home, they didn’t realize they would be standing in a kennel.

The dogs, a few of them pit bulls, were found in cages, their ribs showing through their skin, cops said.

“Many of the animals were underweight, dehydrated and had dirty hair coats,” an ASPCA spokesman said. “Veterinary and behavior experts are conducting forensic exams and providing them with much-needed medical care and behavioral treatment and enrichment.”

The NYPD’s animal cruelty squad is investigating.

Homeowner Cory Elder, 43, was arrested on a slew of charges including drug possession, possession of stolen property and animal neglect and torture. His arraignment was expected to take place in Queens Criminal Court Wednesday, but Elder was hospitalized after complaining of pains. He also refused to be fingerprinted, police sources said.

Cops believe Elder was working with two other men who remain at large.

Anyone with information regarding the animals is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.

The thief targeted the 63-year-old priest at the American Martyrs Roman Catholic Church on Bell Blvd. near Union Turnpike in Hollis Hills around 12:20 p.m. Sunday, according to cops.

The crook told the victim he was also a man of the cloth visiting the church from another country.

The priest believed him and invited him into the rectory, where the conman stole $900 in cash from his bedroom.

The phony priest later took off in a dark-colored sedan southbound on Bell Blvd., police said.

Police on Tuesday released images of the thief in the hopes someone may recognize him. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

As first reported by the Daily News on Monday, the city has only received $49 million of that money because federal authorities say the Adams administration isn’t filing the right paperwork to secure the rest. One Biden administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be candid, even said Adams’ team hasn’t “stepped up to the plate” when it comes to putting the right application paperwork together for the remainder of the aid, which was allocated last year by Congress.

Asked why his administration’s struggling to furnish the right documentation, Adams sought Tuesday afternoon to flip the script back on the feds by noting the outstanding $107 million is small potatoes when compared with the $4 billion the city has spent so far on providing housing and services for migrants.

“Why don’t you go back to that person who stated we haven’t stepped to the plate, and say: ‘Have you guys stepped up to the plate and helping them with this $4 billion, securing the border, allowing people to have work authorization, make sure we have a decompression strategy?'” said Adams, who has for over a year lamented what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Biden administration. “Ask them: Have they stepped up to the plate? New Yorkers have stepped up to the plate.”

To offset migrant spending, Adams has in recent months enacted steep city budget cuts. The cuts have resulted in various service reductions, including the elimination of Sunday hours at all public libraries.

After the mayor’s briefing, a White House official told The News that the Biden administration wants to provide New York City with more financial help to alleviate the migrant-related fiscal burden, noting it supported the creation of a new $1.4 billion fund that’d reimburse cities across the U.S. for migrant costs. However, House Republicans have blocked that allocation.

“Of course, we would love to do more,” the White House official said.

Jacques Jiha, Adams’ budget director, first revealed during a Council hearing Monday that the city has only received $49 million in migrant aid from the feds to date. In his testimony, Jiha said the city hasn’t been able to access the rest of the aid due to “stringent” eligibility requirements that make it “very difficult” to apply.

Neither Adams nor multiple top advisers who joined him for Tuesday’s briefing at City Hall would provide more details on what specifically in the requirements are tripping up their application.

“We’ll look into it and circle back to you,” Fabien Levy, Adams’ deputy mayor for communications, said when asked for specifics.

Sheena Wright, Adams’ first deputy mayor, suggested a finger should ultimately be pointed at the feds, not the mayor’s team.

“We know how to submit paperwork,” she said. “So I think the question is for them: Why haven’t these funds been released?”

Among other requirements, municipalities applying for the aid must provide names, dates of birth and so-called alien registration numbers for migrants who stand to benefit from the financial support, according to guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The FEMA guidance also says spending on hotels cannot exceed 5% of the total amount of aid requested by any given municipality, a wrinkle that could pose a problem for the city, which is housing thousands of new arrivals in hotels.

According to Biden administration officials, FEMA dispatched a team to New York last week to help Adams’ office with resolving aid application snags.

However, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Adams’ chief adviser, claimed it’s “not true” a FEMA team came to New York when asked about the matter during Tuesday’s briefing.

“Why don’t they come and say, ‘Listen, this is what you need to provide,'” Lewis-Martin said. “If we give people paperwork to fill out and they cannot get it done, please assist them.”

Asked about Lewis-Martin’s comments, the White House official reiterated that the FEMA team was in New York last week and provided on-the-ground application support. The official said the administration would contact Lewis-Martin about the matter.

A City Hall spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment on whether Lewis-Martin misspoke.

The latest clash between the mayor’s team and the Biden administration comes as more than 60,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. Though he says he still supports Biden’s reelection bid, the mayor has been vocally frustrated for months with what he sees as a lack of migrant crisis help from the Democratic president, including declaring last year the commander-in-chief had “failed” New York City.

The outstanding federal migrant aid issue came up during a budget hearing held in the City Council on Tuesday, when Manuel Castro, Adams’ Immigration Affairs commissioner, testified that the city is banking on receiving the full $156 million from the feds this year.

Castro’s comment prompted Brooklyn Councilwoman Alexa Aviles, a progressive Democrat, to note that the city has received less than a third of the outlay so far.

“There are some operational issues to address there,” she said.

The woman, whose name is being withheld by The News, filed a so-called “notice of claim” in Manhattan Supreme Court in November saying she intended to sue the mayor for $5 million over allegations that he subjected her to “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination” while they both worked for the city Transit Police Department in 1993.

Since that brief filing, the woman and her attorney have declined to provide more details about her accusations. Adams, meantime, has vehemently denied the accusations, and his attorneys said as recently as a few weeks ago that he had yet to be served with her claim, a formality required to kick off any court proceeding.

However, on Tuesday afternoon, Sylvia Hinds-Radix, Adams’ corporation counsel who leads the city Law Department, filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court demanding that the woman provide “the complaint in this action” within 20 days.

The filing from Hinds-Radix indicates the initial claim has finally been served, as the Law Department otherwise wouldn’t be able to demand a full complaint.

Megan Goddard, the woman’s attorney, did not return a request for comment Tuesday, and neither did a spokesman for the mayor. A Law Department spokesman declined to comment.

In addition to Adams, the woman named the NYPD and the Guardians Association as defendants in her initial claim. The Guardians is a Black police officers’ fraternal organization that the mayor used to head in the 1990s.

Adams confirmed in November that he expected the Law Department to represent him in any case brought by the complainant.

The woman filed her claim under the Adult Survivors Act, a state law that opened a one-year window in 2022 for victims of sexual misconduct to sue their assailants even if the statute of limitations on the claim had expired. Adams’ accuser filed her notice of claim on Nov. 22, 2023, one day before the one-year window closed.

Detectives from the grand larceny squad executed a search warrant at the Beach 44th St. house near Norton Drive in the Rockaways at about 6 a.m. Monday and found the pets living in “deplorable conditions,” the NYPD tweeted.

At least one of the emaciated dogs had been reported stolen, police said. Late Tuesday, cops released photos of the animals in hopes of potentially reuniting them with their owners.

Cops were investigating homeowner Cory Elder, 43, for storing stolen goods and drugs, cops said. Cops say they recovered quantities of heroin and fentanyl along with stolen tools and DJ equipment.

The dogs, several of them pit bulls, were found in cages, their ribs showing through their skin, cops said.

The ASPCA took in the animals.

“Many of the animals were underweight, dehydrated and had dirty hair coats,” an ASPCA spokesman said. “Veterinary and behavior experts are conducting forensic exams and providing them with much-needed medical care and behavioral treatment and enrichment.”

Elder, 43, was arrested on a slew of charges including drug possession, possession of stolen property and animal neglect.

His arraignment was pending in Queens Criminal Court Tuesday.

The suspects, who live in Queens and Brooklyn, were busted on charges of importing and selling illegal merchandise.

The U.S. bars the import of a number of food items from China, including duck blood and duck and goose intestines, but that didn’t prevent the suspects from setting up several shipments in 2022 and 2023, according to court filings.

The intestines are often served in hot pot dishes, while duck blood products are added to dishes like vermicelli soup.

The goods would come in through the Port of Long Beach in California, and the suspects would often then ship them on domestic flights to Kennedy Airport. From there, they’d be taken to a walk-in freezer in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, the feds allege.

One shipping container that arrived in Long Beach was falsely labeled “1,966 cartons of pet grooming tool pet nail clippers,” and in some cases, the contraband intestines were hidden under packaged rattlesnakes, the feds allege.

A federal food safety investigator searched the walk-in freezer in November 2022, and found 79 cartons with 1,800 pounds of illegal goose intestines and 960 pounds of illegal duck intestines, the feds allege.

In June, the United States Department of Agriculture raided the garage of Chu Feng Food Wholesale, which belongs to one of the suspects, and found 6,496 pounds of illegal goose, duck, pork and beef merchandise worth about $147,300, the feds allege.

The suspects — wholesalers Hangming Fang and Shangqing Ou, and transporters Ming Huang Chen, Runhua Hou, Hangting Lin and Minghao Lin — were arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court on Tuesday afternoon. Fang was ordered placed under house arrest until Monday, when he’ll present a bail package; the other five were released on bond.

“They’re not putting my daughter in jail — they’re not,” said Sacara McIntosh, 43, whose 28-year-old daughter, Makeda McDonald, was also charged with reckless driving and speeding for the 2022 crash.

“They’re demons, those police, detectives, all of them,” McIntosh added. “They will not put my daughter in prison … Not when I am alive.”

McDonald’s arrest follows a lengthy investigation into the crash that claimed the life of 24-year-old Moesha McLaughlin, the founder of The Gxlden Glow, a line of natural skincare products. The two women lived in the same house in Rosedale.

“They grew up together as sisters,” said McIntosh. “Very close. We’re all close.”

Police say McDonald was speeding behind the wheel of her Mercedes-Benz when she slammed into a guardrail on the Cross Island Expressway near the Linden Blvd. exit in Cambria Heights around 3:20 a.m. April 8, 2022.

The force of the impact sent the luxury car into the air, police said. It rolled over several times and struck an overhead light pole. The rear of the car was demolished, the windshield was smashed and the roof was ripped off.

McLaughlin, sitting in the back, was rushed by medics to Long Island Jewish Valley Stream but could not be saved.

Doctors told McIntosh that her daughter would never walk again and that McIntosh’s 32-year-old sister, who was riding shotgun during the crash, would likely die as a result of the brain damage she sustained.

McIntosh sees the hand of God in their miraculous recovery.

“The doctor looked at me and said Makeda will never walk again, she’s paralyzed from the waist down,” said McIntosh. “Look at my daughter — she’s not.

“My sister was brain damaged, bleeding on the brain. They told me that’s it, she’s gonna be a vegetable. She’s here! So God is real.”

But divine intervention hasn’t spared McIntosh’s daughter from the crash’s potential criminal consequences, and the worried mom said her family was completely blindsided by McDonald’s arrest two years after the fact.

“They never ever told me there was gonna be a case,” said McIntosh. “They never mentioned anything like that.”

McIntosh rejected investigators’ claims that her daughter was speeding, saying that rain on the night of the crash would have left McDonald’s foot light on the pedal.

“My daughter doesn’t drive in the rain and she doesn’t drive in snow, so there’s no way she could be speeding,” said McIntosh. “So they are lying. We will all see.”

The furious mom says it’s the ambitions of Queens prosecutors that are fueling the case against her daughter — not justice.

“They’re trying to prove a point and build a case, get whatever promotion they’re looking for, almost two years later!” McIntosh shouted.

Born in Jamaica, McLaughlin immigrated to the U.S. as a young girl, leaving her mother and siblings behind to live under McIntosh’s roof with her cousins in Brooklyn and later in Queens. Her father died when she was 9 years old.

McLaughlin was beloved by McIntosh’s family, according to her aunt, who said she treated her niece like one of her own daughters.

“We kept [my niece] here. We made sure she went to school, got an education and a degree. I threw her graduation party,” said McIntosh. “How are we bad family? How?”

McIntosh pointed to McLaughlin’s room as a testament to their love for her, saying it remains unchanged since the day she died.

“We all miss her. Her room is still there,” McIntosh said. “Nobody still hasn’t been in the room. We don’t touch anything. We don’t move anything.”

McDonald herself remains sick with guilt over her cousin’s death and has struggled to move forward with her life in the wake of 2022’s deadly crash, according to her mom.

“Just last week I was telling her, I know it’s going to be two years next month … but I need you to start pulling yourself back together,” McIntosh said. “Your life doesn’t stop.

“I understand you might think, ‘Oh, my cousin lost her life because I was the driver.’ It could’ve been the other way around.”

A friend of McLaughlin’s, who described the crash victim as her “soulmate,” said she can still feel the pain and horror she experienced the morning after the fatal wreck.

“To this day, I’m just still shocked at how she just left us,” said Christina Coriolan, 27. “It’s something I can never, ever feel good about.”

Coriolan, who met McLaughlin in a summer program before they entered high school, said she was drawn to her friend’s enthusiasm for life, which never failed to inspire those around her.

“She was a role model,” said Coriolan. “Anyone that she knew that was around her, she wanted them to succeed in every aspect of life. She was just an uplifting spirit.”

McLaughlin found work counseling residents at a city homeless shelter after graduating from the College of St. Rose in Albany with a degree in forensic psychology in 2020. A strong drive to better herself led the budding psychologist to enroll in a master’s program sometime before the fatal crash, according to Coriolan and McIntosh.

“She just kept elevating herself,” said Coriolan. “She wanted to do more.”

But McLaughlin’s day job and educational pursuits didn’t stymie her entrepreneurial ventures, which included her skincare brand and a YouTube channel where she posted makeup tutorials, according to Coriolan.

“She loved being in the mirror,” said the friend. “She wanted to do something where she could express herself. Something that she can leave behind for her future kids to take her legacy on with them.

“She had so many plans.”

Coriolan is looking forward to her own college graduation later this year and says she owes the achievement to her late friend, who inspired her to re-enroll after she dropped out following the birth of her first child.

“She wanted better for me,” said Coriolan.

Even two years after the crash, Coriolan fears that her friend’s absence will cast a pall on the ceremony.

“It hurts because graduation is approaching and it’s really tough to have someone that was a role model that motivated you and pushed you … It’s just very depressing that she’s no longer here to see the success,” she said.

McIntosh hopes that prosecutors will drop their case against McDonald, saying her daughter has suffered enough from the guilt and pain of her cousin’s death.

“My daughter is shaking! … They need to leave my child alone,” said McIntosh. “Leave my child and let her move on with her life. Moesha, we love Moesha. And Moesha’s memories we will never get out of our heads. Never. Never. It hurts as heck.”

McDonald was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Monday and released on $60,000 bond. She’s due back in court March 20.

“If financial conditions improve and the economy remains strong, we will work with the Council, as we always do, to look at priorities of the Council and the administration and then see what can be fully or partially restored,” Jacques Jiha, who heads Adams’ Office of Management and Budget, said during an hourslong Council hearing.

Jiha made that comment after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) specifically asked him about undoing a $24 million cut that the mayor subjected the city’s three public library systems to in November that forced them to eliminate Sunday hours at all their branches.

Jiha declined to make any specific commitments, though.

“I cannot commit at this point in time that we are going to restore X, Y and Z,” the budget director testified.

The hearing, held to examine the mayor’s $109.4 billion preliminary budget proposal released in January, marked the official starting point of months of negotiations between the mayor’s office and the Council before they must come to an agreement on a city financial plan before the July 1 start of the 2025 fiscal year. In coming weeks, heads from nearly all city agencies will appear before the Council to testify about their budgetary needs.

Ahead of Monday’s hearing, the Council released a new revenue projection, first reported by the Daily News, that projects the city to be on track to rake in $3.3 billion more in income, property, sales and business taxes over the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years than what’s predicted by Jiha’s office.

Council Democrats repeatedly argued in the hearing that their rosier revenue projections should allow the mayor to undo many of the budget cuts he pushed through in November and January on the auspice that the city needed to offset migrant crisis spending and accommodate Jiha’s lower tax revenue forecast.

“With higher than expected revenues in this fiscal year and a durable, resilient economy, I believe our city has the flexibility to reverse many cuts that have been made,” Speaker Adams said at Monday’s hearing.

Jiha did not say he’s ready to accept the Council’s new revenue estimate. He did tell Council members he’s “hoping that your forecast is right,” though.

Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, a Democrat who is chairman of the Finance Committee, suggested after the hearing that he was optimistic.

“If both sides of City Hall can walk into the room with the same shared set of objective data, we will be fine,” Brannan said when asked if he’s hopeful about getting some of Mayor Adams’ cuts reversed. “Hardworking New Yorkers deserve nothing less.”

The mayor already undid some budget cuts in January, including at the NYPD, the FDNY and the Sanitation Department. He said he was able to do so because he had ordered his administration to drastically reduce the amount of money being spent on housing and services for newly arrived migrants.

In Monday’s hearing, Jiha said a key element of managing migrant spending is driving down the number of migrants in city shelters. The administration’s primary vehicle for reducing the census is its controversial 30- and 60-day policies, which limit how long migrants, including families with children, can stay consecutively in shelters.

“If we don’t bring down the population, I don’t know how we’re going to sustain this in the long run,” Jiha told Council members.