The trial of a Queens political operative accused of bilking Mayor Michael Bloomberg for over $1 million kicked off this morning with the defense laying clear their strategy in their opening statement: the real wrongdoer is the mayor himself.

Attorneys for John Haggerty, the political operative, repeatedly told the jury that Bloomberg wanted to win his 2009 re-election bid “at all costs,” even if meant breaking campaign finance law and coordinating election day operations with the Independence Party, whom contracted Haggerty to provide ballot security.

“No money was ever stolen from Michael Bloomberg here,” said Raymond Costello, Haggerty’s attorney. “Michael Bloomberg got what he wanted, he won the election. John Haggerty did what was expected of him. He got indicted.”

According to Costello, Mayor Bloomberg needed the Independence Party to perform ballot security because his campaign feared that they would be accused of suppressing minority voters if the ballot security showed up on one of their campaign filings.

“There was campaign fraud by Mayor Bloomberg and his staff,” Costello added. “They knew the extreme risks of being accused by another minority candidate of voter suppression.”

Before an afternoon break, Mayor Bloomberg’s longtime aide-de-camp, Kevin Sheekey, took the stand and detailed how Haggerty had pressured the campaign to hire him for the ballot security work.

Prosecutors are accusing Haggerty of agreeing to do the ballot security work and then not actually performing it, and substituting a false budget and fake pay stubs when the campaign approached him.

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