This is an eye-popping story that has been hinted at for years, but finally confirmed by the website The Smoking Gun.

Al Sharpton acted as an FBI informant for years against some of his friends in various crime families across the country. According to TSG, Sharpton was identified as a "mafia associate" - "the law enforcement designation given to mob affiliates who, while not initiated, work with and for crime family," according to TSG. Apparently, Sharpton's ties to the music industry in the 1980's brought him in contact with several nefarious characters. An FBI sting operation in 1983 caught him on tape discussing a coke deal with a maffia figure, and the FBI proceeded to flip Sharpton, who accepted the informant assignment to avoid charges.

He was known at the FBI by his handle; CI-7 - confidential informant 7. And while he rose in prominence, he maintained his close to ties to some of the most vicious criminals in the country.

New York Daily News:

Sharpton’s role as an FBI informant was first disclosed in 1988 — but The Smoking Gun obtained hundreds of pages of secret court filings and FBI memos that provide stunning new details of his cooperation. The documents depict Sharpton operating easily in an underworld of violence and corruption, helping the feds collect essential information.

“Sharpton’s cooperation was fraught with danger since the FBI’s principal targets were leaders of the Genovese crime family, the country’s largest and most feared Mafia outfit,” said the report by writer William Bastone.

In an interview Monday with the Daily News, Sharpton acknowledged assisting the FBI beginning in 1983, but he denied he was an informant and disputed much of The Smoking Gun’s report.

The revelations come as Sharpton’s National Action Network holds a convention in New York this week that will feature speeches by Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday and President Obama on Friday. The White House had no immediate comment on The Smoking Gun report.

Sharpton allegedly became an FBI informant after he was caught on tape with a drug kingpin discussing cocaine deals. The feds reportedly threatened him with charges — although it’s unlikely any case would have held up — and successfully flipped him to snitch on Mafia acquaintances.

They saw Sharpton as an asset because he had “established relationships with (boxing) promoter Don King, various elected officials and several powerful New York hoodlums involved in concert promotion, record distribution and talent management,” The Smoking Gun said.

Agents gave Sharpton a customized Hartmann briefcase he used to record conversations touching on mob hits, extortion schemes and the activities of Genovese crime boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante, the cagey mobster who tried to outfox the feds by claiming he was mentally incompetent, The Smoking Gun disclosed.

Let's be clear: At a time when Sharpton was rising in notoriety and influence in the civil rights movement, he was hobnobbing with drug kingpins and murderers - something he would have been doing even if he wasn't an FBI informant.

Sharpton has a daily radio and TV show. Perhaps his employers should ask a few questions like, "When did you stop hanging around with thugs and mafia types?"

They won't, of course. Sharpton, the purveyor of the Tawana Brawley lie, is untouchable.

Last June, Stuart Stevens wrote a piece of the Daily Beast "Al Sharpton’s Long Bill of Goods, From Tawana Brawley to Primetime" that lists several of Sharpton's more egregious acts - including the incitement to murder in the Freddie's Fashion Mart incident:

A few years later, an African-American Pentecostal church asked a Jewish tenant of a church-owned property, Freddie Fashion’s Mart, to evict one of his subtenants, an African-American-run record store. Sharpton led protests crying, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” One of the protesters attacked Freddie Fashion Mart, shot several customers, and started a fire that killed seven employees.

There are a lot of angry, twisted individuals in America and Sharpton is hardly alone in having spent decades vomiting hate, leaving innocent victims in his wake. What distinguishes Sharpton is the willingness of powerful people and organizations to look past the hate when they believe it may benefit them.

The Democratic Party and its candidates for president in 2004 were perfectly content to have Sharpton appear in presidential debates. Not one candidate called Sharpton out for his outrageous history of hate.

And today one of the great American news organizations, NBC News, is spending millions of dollars to rehabilitate and promote Al Sharpton. Americans have been pretty good at sniffing out and discarding haters, but here is Al Sharpton on NBC and MSNBC being promoted as a credible source of information. Sharpton has gone from manipulating the news with vile accusations to delivering the news for NBC. When the Boston-bombing story broke, there was Al Sharpton delivering breaking news for MSNBC.

There is no doubt that fear of Sharpton allows him to get away with murder. White media execs and Democratic politicians worry about getting the Tawana Brawley treatment - outrageous lies that are swallowed whole and believed by most of the black community - if they cross this hateful man. All we can do is continue to point out the hypocrisy in lionizing him, and set the record straight so that in the future, the truth will be known about him.