A source close to Filner tells me rumors that he will resign today are untrue.

— Craig Gustafson (@gustafsoncraig) August 12, 2013

Late morning on Monday, a rumor swept San Diego political and journalistic circles that Mayor Bob Filner was on the verge of resignation. Weekend reports that Filner’s security detail had been deposed at length about what they witnessed while at the accused sexual harasser’s side seemed to be one more nail in his coffin. The rumor was later shot down.

It got me to thinking about the other career-threatening scandal that Filner now faces: a federal probe of whether he traded approval of a San Diego project for a developer’s giving $100,000 to two of his pet causes. It’s not bribery, and it may not be extortion, but it’s plainly against settled law that a government permit cannot be dependent on circumstances unrelated to the permit.

In an interview, incredibly enough, Filner laid out his view of the permitting process as this: “You don’t get free things.”

Why give away your only bargaining chip?

It seems awfully likely that this is also his exact view of the calls for him to resign from all nine San Diego City Council members, Sens. Feinstein and Boxer, and many San Diegans: “You don’t get free things.”

Like Anthony Weiner, who lectures reporters for focusing on his perversions, Filner is plainly kind of delusional. But he has always been absolutely brazen and contemptuous of behavorial norms. So what if a “normal” politician would quit rather than take a city through an ugly, not-sure-to-succeed recall process. So what if a “normal” politician would have been embarrassed into instant retirement when a 10th sexual-harassment accuser came forward.

That’s not what Filner will do. He will extract every last concession he can from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, state Attorney General Kamala Harris (handling the investigation for recused DA Bonnie Dumanis, who ran against Filner for mayor), City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and the Justice Department/FBI. And maybe then he will quit.

But Filner won’t leave quietly. “You don’t get free things.”

Another theory is plausible, as I wrote over the weekend.

“Filner is so off the chart weird and different that no one should assume he will think conventionally. … He doesn’t see anything wrong with hitting on rape victims. Why would anyone assume his motivations are conventional when he displays industrial-strength depravity and thinks it’s just another day at the office?”

But the more I think about Filner’s options and his personality, the more I’m confident we’ll see the “you don’t get free things” attitude from the mayor.

Ant that’s no matter what his lawyers say — he’s 70, and I see no evidence he’s deferred to anyone his entire political career.

Well, that didn’t take long. Multiple news outlets are reporting that the FBI and/or the U.S. Justice Department is looking at a San Diego scandal in which first-year Mayor Bob Filner’s administration conditioned a permit for a project on the developer’s gift of $100,000 to two of Filner’s pet causes. The U-T San Diego has details:

“Federal agents are asking questions about a $100,000 donation to the city made by a developer seeking San Diego Mayor Bob Filner’s approval for revisions to a project in Kearny Mesa.

“FBI officials visited more than one city official this week inquiring about the $100,000 in checks, which Filner said last week he returned to the developer, Sunroad Centrum Partners.

“The money was to go to two Filner pet projects, a veterans memorial in Ocean Beach and a daylong bicycling event. According to a voice mail obtained by U-T Watchdog last week, the developer made a connection between the donations and Filner’s support of an easement for the project at Kearny Villa Road and Lightwave Avenue.”

Filner’s Sgt. Schultz defense: I know nothing

But the mayor’s defense is that this was all news to him.

“On Friday, Filner told reporters he was unaware that a top-level administrator in his office had accepted the contribution as a consideration for the mayor’s support of the project changes. Filner said he thought it was just a good-faith gesture.

“’I thought they were offering a voluntary donation,’ Filner told reporters.

“The official, deputy chief of staff Allen Jones, is no longer with the city, over unrelated disagreements over Filner’s policies and management style.

“Jones [told the U-T] after Filner’s news conference that the mayor knew full well that the payment was given in consideration for approval of changes to a Kearny Mesa project. Jones said he had recommended the money go to parks in Kearny Mesa and did not know how or why the money changed purposes.”

Robin Hood shtick won’t shield mayor if his testimony is false

Will this scandal bring down Filner? Normally, I’d say no way. His Robin Hood shtick — he’s just pushing/prodding/forcing the rich to do what they should anyways — plays well with a lot of people. It’s especially potent in San Diego — a city where most insiders, including some Republicans, believe that downtown GOP-allied business interests have long had more influence over how City Hall works than one would expect, given the clear dominance of Democrats in voter registration.

But will Filner’s belligerent belief that the rules don’t apply to him come back to haunt him in the federal probe?

The chances seem unusually high. If, under oath, Filner continues to deny awareness of the shady deal with Sunroad, he could be in a world of trouble. Literally no one I have talked to in the five days since the mayor denied knowing about the shakedown believes Filner is telling the truth. It’s not just that he is a “notorious micromanager,” in the words of the Voice of San Diego. It’s that no one in his administration makes a big decision without his OK because they know that if it goes wrong — or even if it hits some minor speed bumps — they will be personally villified. It’s the Filner way.

So get ready for a stormy ride. We’ll see a few weeks of headlines that focus on the fact that the U.S. attorney for the San Diego region should recuse herself because of her past issues with Filner.

‘You don’t get free things’ comments hard to explain away

But sooner or later, Filner will be deposed under oath. And if he says that his aide engaged in a classic Filner maneuver — bullying someone without any leverage or power to stand up for themselves — without his knowledge, well, that could produce a political paroxysm in San Diego.

Last month, when the scandal broke, in an interview with 10 News San Diego, the mayor basically 99 percent admitted the Sunroad permit was a pay-for-play situation:

“When Filner was asked whether he was extorting money from developers, this is what he said: ‘That’s a ridiculous word. What we’re trying to do is make sure that people that get things from the city understand that they also have to give things back. You don’t get free things.'”

So it seems to me that the Sgt. Schultz act will be a hard sell with federal prosecutors. We shall see. But after Filner’s seven months of insanity at San Diego City Hall, what’s happened in recent days sure feels like karma.

“You don’t get free things.” Wow.