Big time leftist lawyer accused of rape.

Lawyer probed in alleged rape of Sharpton’s friend after party

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The Rev. Al Sharpton is seen with attorney Sanford Rubenstein in this 2010 photo. Photo: Rick Mackler-Rangefinder-Globe P

Attorney Sanford Rubenstein — who has shared the spotlight with the Rev. Al Sharpton in many high-profile police-brutality cases — is under investigation by the NYPD for the alleged rape of one of Sharpton’s own female friends, The Post has learned.

No charges have been filed against Rubenstein, who allegedly attacked the woman in his posh East 64th Street penthouse in the hours after both attended Sharpton’s 60th-birthday party at the Four Seasons restaurant Wednesday night.

The alleged victim is a Manhattan executive in her 40s who lives in Brooklyn, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

She had attended Sharpton’s star-studded party — with guests including Gov. Cuomo, Spike Lee and Aretha Franklin — with another woman, sources said.

Afterward, she and the other woman went back to Rubenstein’s place for drinks, the sources said. At some point, the other woman departed, and the victim and Rubenstein, who had met through Sharpton, were alone.

“The next thing she knows, it’s Thursday morning, and she wakes up naked in his bed,” a law-enforcement source said of the ­victim.

Rubenstein, 70 — who has won tens of millions of dollars in city-settlement payouts in police-abuse cases, including the torture of Abner Louima, the wedding-night fatal shooting of Sean Bell, and more recently, the fatal chokehold arrest of Eric Garner — had his driver take the woman home to Brooklyn, with Rubenstein first getting dropped off himself at his offices on Court Street in Downtown Brooklyn, the source said.

The sickened woman was bleeding from the sexual contact, the source said.

When the bleeding continued into Friday, she went to Methodist Hospital, the source said.

It was hospital officials who determined that they were dealing with the aftermath of a sexual assault, and called the cops, who got Manhattan district attorney sex-crimes prosecutors involved, the source said.

“She passed out and woke to him” violating her, another source said.

“She was knocked out — and that is rape,” the second source said, adding that “there are credible aspects of the case and she’s credible — but she doesn’t remember much.”

“SHE WASN’T THINKING ABOUT IT UNTIL SHE REALIZED [AT THE HOSPITAL] THAT THIS WAS A CRIME . . . SHE’S COOPERATING” WITH THE INVESTIGATION, A SOURCE SAID.

Investigators are awaiting toxicology results on the woman’s blood, the first source said.

So far, her case is being bolstered by witness accounts of her extreme drunkenness in the hours before the party, the second source said.

“She wasn’t thinking about it until she realized [at the hospital] that this was a crime . . . She’s cooperating” with the investigation, the source added.

The incident is being investigated as a violation of the state’s third-degree-rape statute, which makes it a felony to engage in sexual intercourse with a person who is unable to give consent.

The charge carries a maximum sentencing range of 1¹/₃ to 4 years.

Rubenstein and Sharpton go way back. Rubinstein hosted a party in his penthouse for Sharpton in 2001 after the civil-rights leader was released from prison — where he lost 30 pounds in a hunger strike. Sharpton had been busted for protesting missile tests on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques.

The lawyer also won a $200,000 payout from the city after Sharpton was stabbed in 1991 during a Brooklyn rally.

“I know him, I know her,” Sharpton said Saturday night of an investigation that now has him in the middle between two friends.

“But how can I know what happened at somebody’s residence ­after my party?”

Additional reporting by Julia Marsh