Adams Indictment Fallout Continues: Live Updates

The most scandal-plagued member of the Adams administration has stepped down. The New York Times reports that Tim Pearson submitted his resignation letter on Monday, informing the mayor that he was leaving City Hall “to focus on family, self-care, and new endeavors.” Politico reports that he was forced out, which is something at least five of Adams’s other aides had been pressuring the mayor to do.

Pearson, a former NYPD inspector who has known the mayor for decades, served as senior adviser for public safety with a broad set of responsibilities, including awarding contracts for the city’s migrant shelters. He was also one of the highest paid members of the administration.

He’s one of several top aides whose devices were recently seized by federal agents, and is also facing four sexual harassment lawsuits. He’s the fifth senior City Hall official to depart in less than three weeks, and the first since Adams’s indictment.

CNN reports that the governor has told Adams to dismiss the people in his administration who are caught up in the various investigations swirling around him and City Hall.

Publicly, Hochul reiterated on Monday that the mayor needs to prove he can still lead the city.

“I’m giving the mayor an opportunity now to demonstrate to New Yorkers – and to me – that we are righting the ship, that we have the opportunity to instill the confidence that I think is wavering right now, and to power forward with an effective government,” she said.

Errol Louis reports that “behind closed doors, many of the city’s Black political leaders are quietly laying the groundwork for life after Adams”:

The underlying logic of these blunt, private conversations goes like this: It took generations of voter registration, street protests, civil-rights lawsuits, patient institution-building, and countless hard-fought local campaigns to grow the community’s political power to its current apex. New York currently has Black officials as mayor, public advocate, Assembly Speaker, Senate majority leader, City Council Speaker, State attorney general, lieutenant governor, chief judge of the state, and the chairs of four of the city’s five Democratic county organizations, along with a congressman on track to become the next Speaker of the House.

These men and women — and the army of big-money donors, campaign strategists, party loyalists, and union leaders who support them — are not inclined to risk the city’s future and their hard-won seats at the table of power for Adams, whose self-inflicted legal and political problems may have placed him beyond the hope of rescue in any event. A close reading of their public statements shows that New York’s Black power players are preparing to see Adams step down.

Read the rest of Errol’s report here.

Alex Spiro, the mayor’s lead attorney, laid out his team’s filing to dismiss the federal government’s bribery charge during a press conference on Monday. “It defies all logic, it defies common sense, and it isn’t true,” he said of the allegations made by prosecutors.

Spiro said that the various travel upgrades given to Adams were simply the typical courtesies provided to politicians and don’t amount to crimes under federal law. “Congressmen get upgrades. They get corner suites. They get better tables at restaurants. They get free appetizers. They have their iced tea filled up,” he said. “That’s what happens. That’s the truth.”

On Monday, Mayor Adams’s legal team officially requested a dismissal of the bribery charge levied against him. In a 25-page filing, his attorneys argued that the activity alleged by federal prosecutors doesn’t meet the legal standard recently revised by the Supreme Court. They claim that the Justice Department spent “years of casting about for something, anything, to support a federal charge against New York City Mayor Eric Adams,” but that their claim that Adams received travel benefits in exchange for taking actions around the Turkish Consulate building amounts to a “vague allegation.”

“The indictment does not allege that Mayor Adams agreed to perform any official act at the time that he received a benefit,” his attorneys Alex Spiro and William Burck wrote.

Adams’s team denounced the four additional charges against the mayor as “equally meritless because they rest on a host of false claims evidently attributable to a self-interested staffer with an axe to grind.” That appeared to be a reference to former aide Rana Abbasova, who is now cooperating with authorities.

Politico reports on some shady seeming dealings between the the Adam’s administration and an “artificial intelligence company that has drawn scrutiny over its work in China — and reports substantial financial losses“:

The firm, Remark Holdings, pushed its way into the administration with the help of a top adviser ensnared in multiple investigations. That adviser — Timothy Pearson — insisted that New York City Fire Department officials meet with Las Vegas-based Remark at least four times earlier this year. The pitch, in part, was to replace fire guards with AI-powered technology. At the time, Pearson had a personal relationship with a consultant who worked for Remark, their social media accounts show. …

Despite being rebuffed by fire officials, Remark’s technology has been tested in one of the city’s municipal shelters for migrants who have been arriving in droves over the past two-and-a-half years — a pilot program described by two people familiar with it and confirmed by Adams’ spokesperson Liz Garcia. In that facility, Remark’s AI software was supposed to observe feeds from the city’s security cameras and alert officials to fires, the person said.

Pearson, who is one of the highest-paid city employees at $257,374 a year, oversees contracts for the migrant shelters and attended Remark’s introductory meeting at the fire department’s headquarters.

Guess who hired Remark first:

Before Adams even assumed the mayoralty, Remark showed an interest in him. When Covid hit in 2020, it was hired to install a camera-based temperature check system at Zero Bond, where the mayor is a regular. The following year, a representative from Remark was on hand to witness Adams’ election night victory speech at the tony nightclub.

Read the rest of Politico’s report here.

The City’s Alyssa Katz has published an extensive explainer on the scope of the campaign finance allegations against Adams, including a walkthrough of the whopping amount of matching funds prosecutors say he made off with — which has prompted some confusion:

[The stunning $10 million figure is] the sum Manhattan U.S. attorney Damian Williams alleges Adams improperly obtained “as a result of false certifications” that Adams and those working under him made about their compliance with campaign finance regulations. The campaign, the indictment alleges, knowingly accepted donations from overseas contributors smuggled in through American donors. They then applied for matching funds against some of this money, bilking the New York City taxpayer-funded program that supplies $8 for every $1 raised for city residents’ contributions up to $250.

Many readers of the grand jury indictment concluded that the Turkish donations at the core of the indictment yielded $10 million for Adams. But that figure is actually the entirety of the matching funds granted Adams’ 2021 campaign by the city Campaign Finance Board — more than the $8.9 million his campaign raised in private dollars. …

[The city’s public matching funds program] is designed to get big money out of local politics. The indictment alleges that the Adams campaign subverted that purpose by disguising donations from foreign nationals — who are forbidden by federal law to contribute at all — as small donations. Some of those the Adams campaign listed as coming from New Yorkers, which then unlocked public matching funds.

So Adams may have only received thousands of dollars in matching funds specifically matching the roughly $26,000 prosecutors allege he knowingly raised in illegal foreign contributions and then listed in his campaign’s request for matching funds. But those illegal contributions also meant that Adams was ineligible for any of the $10 million in matching funds his 2021 campaign was ultimately awarded.

And as Katz also points out, the Adams campaign’s abuse of the public financing system doesn’t end with Turkey:

THE CITY found multiple instances of forbidden pass-through donations that were matched by public funds, where people listed in Adams’ campaign filings said they did not give and had no idea anyone had contributed using their identities. And a circle of Adams supporters have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a separate scheme. 

As a Times reporter — who just flew business class to Istanbul and stayed in one of the posh hotel suites Adams was given in a free upgrade — has confirmed, the WiFi password at JFK’s Turkish Airlines lounge has “ADAMS” in it:

[I]n a strange turn of events, the lounge’s Wi-Fi password turned out to be TKNYCADAMS.

That was merely an odd coincidence, according to the attendant at the front desk, who said that the lounge was operated by a company called Adams International and that its proprietor was a man named John Adams.

The Daily News reports:

Outgoing Schools Chancellor David Banks and his decade-plus partner First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright planned to finally tie the knot this weekend, as a federal corruption probe ensnares the Banks family, three sources familiar with their nuptial plans tell the Daily News. The wedding ceremony between two of Mayor Adams’ top aides, on Martha’s Vineyard, was reportedly scheduled for August 2023 — but postponed until the most tumultuous week of the Adams administration …

While there’s no indication Banks and Wright are getting hitched for marital privilege, their union could provide them legal cover if prosecutors try to force husband and wife to testify against each other.

The influential Black leader initially seemed non-committal about Adams’s fate after the mayor was indicted. On Saturday, he said Adams shouldn’t be removed from office unless he is convicted. He made the remarks at a National Action Network rally on Saturday morning:

The governor should not be pressured into removing Eric Adams from being the mayor. There is no precedent for that. We just had a U.S. senator, [Robert] Menendez, indicted. They found gold bars in his house, Mercedes Benz … He was not forced to resign until he was convicted. …

We’re going to see where the evidence is, but we are not going to stand by silently and let Governor Hochul not know that some of us are saying: “Do not change the process and the precedent,” let due process take its course.

Sharpton said he had spoken to Adams “several times this week,” and that “if the mayor decides he cannot run the city … let the mayor decide where he wants to go.”

But he also indicated that he was concerned about the national implications: “I do not want this to get into a contest that helps Trump.”

The New York Post reports that earlier this week:

two FBI agents probing the NYPD showed up at the downtown Manhattan office building where two top mayoral advisors, both former cops, work, police sources said. 

The feds were “looking for records,” sources said, and signed the visitors log at around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday on the 16th floor of 375 Pearl St., otherwise known as the Verizon Building. NYPD Deputy Mayor Phil Banks and mayoral aide Timothy Pearson work on that floor. There is a records room, and legal and budget offices on that floor.

But both Banks and an Adams spokesperson said their offices were neither searched nor visited that day:

“City Hall’s additional offices at 375 Pearl Street were not raided by federal law enforcement on Wednesday as was inaccurately reported earlier and there is no record of them visiting our team that day,” Adams’ spokesperson said in a statement.

“The building has many other tenants and we cannot speak to whether anyone else in the building had a scheduled meeting with federal law enforcement on Wednesday, but, again, there is no indication that any federal law enforcement was present in our offices that day,” they added.

Politico reported in 2022 that 375 Pearl Street is where Mayor Adams and Phil Banks have “secret” offices:

Adams and Phil Banks, his deputy mayor for public safety, nestled their offices within 375 Pearl St., a 32-story structure commonly known as the Verizon Building that declares itself “the most secure and resilient building in Manhattan,” according to interviews with 15 people who work in and around city government and are aware of the arrangement. The setup offers them what City Hall cannot: A covert space away from the prying eyes of City Council members, reporters and employees who work in the building and can spot much of the activity within. …

Political activity, such as fundraising, is not allowed to take place in government offices, so it’s not uncommon for mayors to seek space away from City Hall to conduct that type of work. 

The New York Times helpfully notes that Eric Adams is not the first sitting mayor of New York City to be indicted, but he is the first one to ever face federal charges, and the first indicted mayor in the city’s modern history (after the five boroughs were consolidated in 1898).

Back in 1872, Mayor A. Oakey Hall — a Tammany Hall-backed politician who was know at the time as “Elegant Oakley” — was was indicted as part of the reforms that ultimately took down Tammany’s Boss Tweed. Here’s the overview from the Times:

A successful lawyer and prosecutor who enjoyed the spotlight, Hall hitched his fortunes to the Tammany Hall of the 1860s, and therefore to its boss, William Marcy Tweed, the undisputed master of enriching himself at the expense of the public.

The costly monument to Tweed corruption is at 52 Chambers Street, commonly known as Tweed Courthouse but now the headquarters for the Department of Education. The city spent nearly $13 million — or about $300 million in today’s dollars — on a building that should have cost considerably less. But fraudulent bills submitted for work never done, by people who sometimes didn’t exist, provided a fire hose of money for Tweed and his gang, with Hall signing the necessary paperwork without pausing to consider the discrepancies and cost overruns.

Detailed revelations in The New York Times exposed the Tweed Ring, prompting national outrage. “It will all blow over,” Hall told a reporter. “These gusts of reform are wind and clatter.”

But the winds of reform kept blowing. In early 1872, after weeks of whispers about impending criminal charges, Hall was indicted — charged, effectively, with willfully neglecting his official duties.

Like his distant successor, Mr. Adams, Hall adamantly maintained his innocence. And, like Mr. Adams, he insisted that a trial be held immediately. The illness of a juror led to a mistrial. Eager to be vindicated before the end of his term, Hall continued to advocate for speed, only to have his second trial end in a hung jury.

In modern times, corruption scandals have forced two New York City mayors from office — Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950 — but neither was ever indicted.

Lewis-Martin had been on vacation in Japan and Crane-Newman reports that when she returned on Friday, Manhattan DA investigators were waiting for her at JFK International Airport to take her phones, as were federal authorities to serve her with a subpoena. Her home in Brooklyn was also raided:

Her absence during this tumultuous period had been noticed, as City and State reported Thursday:

As federal scrutiny around New York City Mayor Eric Adams and other members of his inner circle intensified in the last few weeks, one of the mayor’s loyal advisers has not been at his side. Longtime friend and adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin has been on vacation in Japan for at least a week, and her absence at recent weekly press conferences held by the mayor has raised some eyebrows.

But talking to City & State from Japan on Thursday, … Lewis-Martin denied rumors that she and the mayor had been at odds. “I will be back and I will stand with my brother,” she told City & State from Japan on Thursday. “And anyone who doubts that has clearly lost their mind.” Lewis-Martin said that she is returning on Friday.

During a radio interview on Friday, Lewis-Martin made an odd apparent admission, as Politico reports:

Later Friday, in a surreal moment, Lewis-Martin described the encounter in a broadcast interview with Aidala, a celebrity criminal attorney who moonlights as a talk radio host. Lewis-Martin maintained her innocence — as well as the mayor’s — but left open the possibility they acted outside the law.

“We are imperfect, but we’re not thieves,” she said on AM 970. “And I do believe that in the end that the New York City public will see that we have not done anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us.”

Alex Spiro addressed reporters outside the courthouse following Adams’s arraignment:

Adams didn’t have to surrender his passport:

He’s due back in court at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 2. Adams’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said they want “a speedy trial”:

On Friday afternoon, Adams officially entered a not-guilty plea for all five counts levied against him by federal prosecutors during his arraignment hearing. “I am not guilty, Your Honor,” Adams said after waiving a public reading of the indictment against him.

Judge Parker quickly brought the hearing to order at noon, greeting the mayor and reading him his rights as a defendant. Parker proceeded to read a summary of the charges against him as Adams sat in the courtroom looking ahead.

Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker entered the courtroom and introduced herself to Mayor Adams. She then read him his constitutional rights and asked the former cop if he understood.

“Yes, I do, Your Honor,” he said.

Current Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso says he turned down the flights and gifts:

Since word of the indictment came down, the number of politicians calling for Adams to resign continues to rise. Here’s a running list, as of now:

City Councilmembers
• Shaun Abreu
• Alexa Avilés
• Chris Banks
• Erik Bottcher
• Tiffany Cabán
• Carmen De La Rosa
• Oswald Feliz
• Jen Gutiérrez
• Shahana Hanif
• Robert Holden
• Crystal Hudson
• Shekar Krishnan
• Linda Lee
• Sandy Nurse
• Chi Ossé
• Lincoln Restler
• Julie Won

New York’s Congressional Delegation
• Representative Nicole Malliotakis
• Representative Jerry Nadler
• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Representative Elise Stefanik

Other City Officials
• Comptroller Brad Lander
• Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso
• Former comptroller (and 2025 mayoral candidate) Scott Stringer

State Senators
• Jabari Brisport
• Iwen Chu
• Kristen Gonzalez
• Andrew Gounardes
• Brad Hoylman-Sigal
• John Liu
• Zellnor Myrie
• Gustavo Rivera
• Julia Salazar

State Assemblymembers
• Robert Carroll
• Harvey Epstein
• Phara Souffrant Forrest
• Emily Gallagher
• Jessica González-Rojas
• Danny O’Donnell
• Grace Lee
• Zohran Kwame Mamdani
• Marcela Mitaynes
• Karines Reyes
• Linda Rosenthal
• Tony Simone

The calls for Adams to step down had already been growing in the weeks since the federal government conducted a series of raids on his top aides. Those calling for his resignation have largely been progressives from the State Legislature and the City Council who often clashed with the more moderate Adams on policy. On Wednesday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined their ranks, writing on social media that the parade of exits from city government following the federal searches were a threat to City Hall’s day-to-day functioning. “For the good of the city, he should resign,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said that State Senator and 2025 mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos had also called for Adams to resign on Wednesday night. She released a statement criticizing the mayor but did not call for him to step down, telling a reporter, “I’m not interested in dancing on anyone’s grave tonight.”

Questions about Adams’s future in City Hall only continue to grow as the mayor is set to appear in court later today. If Adams resigns or is removed from office, he would be replaced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is next in the line of succession.

During a Friday-morning appearance on NY1, Williams said this is something he’s had to consider since assuming office. “When you get the job, you know this is a possibility, so you’re always having peripheral conversations. The past couple weeks we’ve had to make sure that’s a little more poignant to make sure all eventualities are covered,” he said. “But it’s just trying to figure out what’s the best plan to make sure that trust is restored?”

As acting mayor, Williams would be required to schedule a special election to replace Adams. When asked if Williams would consider running in that race if it happens, he demurred. “There’s so many things that have to happen before we even get to that question. It’s really far ahead,” he said.

Mayor Adams will be spending part of his Friday in court. He is set to be arraigned in federal court in lower Manhattan at noon as he faces the newly unveiled corruption charges against him. Judge Dale Ho has scheduled the initial conference following the arraignment for October 2.

Per the New York Times, the mayor arrived at the courthouse around 8:45 a.m. with his attorney in tow.

The entire Adams administration is now working under a big cloud, and it’s not clear how that will impact its ability to get things done. Politico reports:

[W]hile staffers said agency work is continuing apace, some said the turmoil surrounding Adams could mar administration priorities, like a high-profile zoning plan slated for a City Council vote this fall.

Kathy Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, emphasized the importance of that kind of focus right now. “Clearly the indictment has the potential to really damage morale and I think our job as New Yorkers is to try and express our support and appreciation for people who are working hard and doing their jobs and are not involved in this case,” Wylde said in an interview. “It’s necessary to prove that even under the cloud of the indictment, the administration and the city as a whole can get things done.”

She said she’s concerned about how the pattern of city employees exiting high-powered positions will impact the functioning of government …

“I think there’s definitely the concern, at what point do people truly just lose faith in this administration, and as a result, our work,” said one city official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter. “If you’re a very public figure within this administration, you do have to think about your future and your reputation, and how long you can stay aligned even if you aren’t named in these indictments, or named in these raids.”

In a statement released Thursday night, the governor called the indictment “the latest in a disturbing pattern of events that has, understandably, contributed to a sense of unease among many New Yorkers.”

She also indicated that she is still considering whether to intervene and that Adams has a few days to think over what to do:

New Yorkers deserve to know that their municipal government is working effectively, ethically and in the best interests of the people - driving down crime, educating our kids and ensuring basic city services continue unabated. It’s now up to Mayor Adams to show the City that he is able to lead in that manner.

While I review my options and obligations as the Governor of New York, I expect the Mayor to take the next few days to review the situation and find an appropriate path forward to ensure the people of NYC are being well-served by their leaders.

So she’s not calling for the mayor to resign, but that doesn’t mean she won’t — or that she won’t act to remove him if she and Adams ultimately disagree about that “appropriate path forward.”

Here is the full statement:

Here’s who hasn’t publicly called for Adams to step down, at least not yet:

• Governor Kathy Hochul, who said on Thursday night that she is still reviewing the matter and her options — and that she expected Adams to “take the next few days to review the situation and find the appropriate path forward.”

• House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who said Thursday that Adams is “entitled to the presumption of innocence” and that it is up to a jury to evaluate the charges.

• Senator Chuck Schumer, who said Thursday, “The charges are serious, and the legal process should now play out speedily and fairly.”

• City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who said Thursday, “I ask the mayor to seriously and honestly consider whether full attention can be given to our deserving New Yorkers who need our government to be sound and stable.”

• President Joe Biden, who, when asked Thursday if he thought Adams should resign, said, “I don’t know.”

• Representative Gregory Meeks, who is also head of the Queens Democratic Party, said Thursday, “Due process must run its course, allowing for a jury of his peers to render a verdict.”

• The Reverend Al Sharpton on Thursday stressed how complicated the situation is but declined to defend Adams, explaining that he needed to finish reviewing the charges and discuss the matter with other political leaders.

• State attorney general Leticia James, who said Thursday that “the allegations outlined in the indictment are serious and troubling” and that “we will continue follow the facts of this case as they become available.”

• Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who would become acting mayor if Adams resigns or is removed, has said, “It is the mayor’s obligation to prove to New Yorkers that there is a real plan and path to govern the city effectively and regain trust, and his time to show that plan is rapidly running out.”

Reports Politico:

Lawyers in Hochul’s office on Thursday internally discussed the legal and constitutional framework for removing an elected official, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the talks. The discussions were not an indication that Hochul is planning to remove Adams, but are being viewed internally as a way of keeping the governor’s options open.

This power hasn’t been used since 1932:

[FDR’s] most famous use of the power involved former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, whose bank accounts had large infusions of money from city contractors. “The evidence against Walker was in a report by a special prosecutor,” Tammany historian Terry Golway said. “The scenario that faces Hochul is worse than the scenario that faced FDR, because this was an indictment.”

Walker wound up resigning before he was removed, after a judge ruled in 1932 that Roosevelt’s power to oust officials was essentially unlimited. The judge concluded that a mayor has the right to have witnesses testify before a governor, but that the state’s chief executive otherwise only needs to answer “to the people and his own conscience” in instances like this.

The city Department of Investigation searched New York City sheriff Anthony Miranda’s office in Long Island City on Thursday, sources said.

The raid comes three days after the New York Post reported the DOI was probing Miranda over allegations that he was raising money in exchange for breaks on enforcement.

City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The DOI declined to comment.

David Freedlander reports on how the indictment complicates the campaigns of those running against Adams in next year’s primary — particularly with the specter of Andrew Cuomo around:

Strategists affiliated with the announced campaigns say they hope Adams remains in the race. If not, he would be weakened and it would turn the race into a referendum against him. The labor unions, major donors, and Black and religious Jewish leaders who supported him in 2021 have not yet given an indication of rethinking their support. If that remains true, Adams would have a decent base to build on. And none of those groups is likely to look fondly at the prospect of a mayor who is well to Adams’s left, as all of the declared candidates are.

Looming over all these machinations, meanwhile, is Andrew Cuomo. Should Adams resign before March 27, the special election to replace him would be a sprint, and even the mayor’s current rivals admit that Cuomo would have a decided advantage based on name recognition alone.

Cuomo has signaled he would be unlikely to challenge Adams in 2025 and would get into the race only if Adams does not. People close to him, however, say that calculation is no longer true, if it ever was. Although Cuomo is said to prefer to run for his old job as governor, people close to him say he is anxious to get back into the political game and is almost certain to declare his candidacy once the presidential election is over. Asked about the likelihood of the former governor jumping into the race, one person close to him was succinct: “100 percent chance.”

Read the rest here.

The editors aren’t endorsing mayoral candidates anymore but are still publishing op-eds calling for mayors to resign:

The mayor will have his day in court and is entitled to make a vigorous defense, but that does not mean he must force New York City to wait for him to prove his innocence under the law. To serve the city that elected him, Mr. Adams should immediately resign and turn City Hall over to someone untainted by criminal charges and endless investigations …

If he stayed in office, Mr. Adams would have to guide a City Hall that is now adrift, while facing a monthslong prosecution that will consume his attention and time. Concerns about his ethics and integrity would surely give potential replacements grave doubts about being a part of his administration. It is a task that would be a struggle for any elected official, but especially for one who has never been able to demonstrate a command over the city’s sprawling work force or point to major successes in the first three years of his term.

Politico’s New York Playbook highlights the mess that was Adams’s small, defiant press conference shortly before the indictment was unsealed:

“This is the biggest on-camera moment of this guy’s entire time as mayor, and to have like the biggest optics fail of the all time is remarkable,” said one national political advance expert with almost two decades in the field, who asked not to be named to speak frankly about the situation.

“This is an operation that works in the most highly competitive, jousting media environment on the earth, and to make that decision is somewhat incomprehensible. What did they think was going to happen here under a small tailgating tent on the street corner?”

Speaking with reporters on Thursday, the former president used the charges against Adams to attack the Justice Department:

I watched about a year ago when he talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city, and the federal government should pay us, and we shouldn’t have to take them. And I said, ‘You know what? He’ll be indicted within a year.’ And I was exactly right, because that’s what we have. We have people that use the Justice Department and the FBI at levels that have never been seen before.

I wish him well. These are dirty players. These are bad people. They cheat and they do anything necessary.

Trump is not the only figure on the right who has called the indictment a politically motivated attack.

The mayor is currently scheduled to be arraigned at noon.

Speaking to the press alongside Adams on Thursday afternoon, attorney Alex Spiro disputed specific allegations in the indictment, blamed the mayor’s aides, and said there were emails that would exonerate Adams:

Curbed’s Eavesdropper was there today. Here are some of the anonymous comments they overheard:

Is he going to prison, then, or back here?

The fact that he’s relatively famous in Turkey — I was like, What? I guess now he is. But before?

Man gets around, I guess. 

What a day. What a freaking day. Were you surprised?

I wasn’t surprised, but yeah, the shoe dropped.

The person you want to call is under indictment right now.

He can still call me back!

That man did not know how to just take a nibble.  

Read the rest here.

The New York Times spoke with the influential Black leader on Thursday:

In an interview, Mr. Sharpton pointedly declined to defend Mr. Adams, saying his lawyers were still reviewing the charging papers. He said he had called a meeting for the weekend with around a dozen Black leaders, including Mr. Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, and Representative Gregory W. Meeks, the influential head of the Queens Democratic Party.

“You are dealing with Damian Williams. You are dealing with the election in just a few weeks. You are dealing with whether the governor is going to remove you what that means for the House races that could make Hakeem Jeffries speaker,” Mr. Sharpton said. “It’s not going to be an easy decision, and everybody may not be happy.”

Curbed’s Kim Velsey answers some key questions about the Turkish consulate, including why Adams’s alleged pressure on the FDNY over the building’s occupancy certificate is a problem:

Asking officials or politicians to help a project jump the line in the Fire Department’s notoriously slow and onerous approval process was not in and of itself unusual, numerous developers told us last year. But while leaning on officials to get speedy sign-offs on safety issues that have been corrected is common, if Adams pressed the Fire Department to overlook safety issues at the consulate, rather than just getting its application to the top of the pile, that would be another thing altogether. (There is also the matter of bribery: The indictment alleges that Adams exerted pressure on Fire officials after a Turkish official told Adams that it was his turn to repay the gifts.) And according to the indictment, he did just that. The Fire Department official overseeing the building’s safety assessment was told he would lose his job if he did not follow the mayor’s order to make sure it opened in time for Erdogan’s visit. As of last November, the Times noted that the consulate was still open under a temporary certificate of occupancy.

Matt Stieb collects all the stuff Adams allegedly received from Turkish officials and businessmen and how Adams’s staffers tried to cover it up:

Adams staffers also allegedly created fake paper trails and false invoices to try to cover his tracks, like on a planned June 2021 trip in which a Turkish Airlines manager tried to charge $50 for two business-class tickets to Istanbul worth $15,000.

“No, that wouldn’t work,” an Adams staffer wrote to the airline manager.

“How much should I charge?” the manager wrote back.

“His every step is being watched right now,” the staffer wrote. “$1,000 or so. Let it be somewhat real. We don’t want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media’s attention is on Eric.”

For the same trip, the Adams staffer asked where he could stay. When the airline manager suggested the Four Seasons, the Adams staffer wrote that it was too expensive.

“Why does he care? He is not going to pay,” the airline staffer wrote. “His name will not be on anything either.”

“Super,” the Adams staffer wrote back. The pair planned a trip costing an additional $8,500 — though the whole itinerary, including the flight, was eventually scrapped.

Curbed has also taken a look at all the luxury hotels where Adams allegedly got free or discounted rooms.

Intelligencer contributor Elie Honig writes that it isn’t clear yet:

 The indictment has its merits, to be sure. Reading between the lines, prosecutors apparently have flipped one or more campaign insiders who can detail the inner workings of the alleged scheme. It seems clear that Adams tried to cover up his receipt of more than $100,000 worth of free or discounted luxury travel. And the indictment quotes damaging text messages in which Adams appears to instruct his campaign staff to find a way to accept donations from Turkish nationals and leans on the FDNY to expedite the Turkish House inspection.

But bribery and corruption cases are notoriously difficult for prosecutors. Defendants often claim — as Adams surely will here — that if anything illegal was happening, he was in the dark about it, and that he was just doing his job by making sure that constituent needs were met. Sometimes you can read an indictment and say “Game over.” This isn’t one of those cases. That’s not to say the indictment is weak or problematic, but it’s no slam dunk.

He also says don’t expect the trial to happen any time soon:

Typically, a case of this seriousness and complexity would take at least a year, and likely more than that, to get to trial. That said, if Adams remains in office as mayor, the case will take on more urgency and may move more quickly toward a resolution.

The Feds, and especially the SDNY, are used to steamrolling their charged defendants. Usually, the charges are too powerful, the evidence is too overwhelming, and the resources available to the government too vast. But this one is going to be a pitched battle, and it’s a mistake to predict any particular outcome. 

Yes. Per the SDNY press release on the charges:

ADAMS, 64, of Brooklyn, New York, is charged with one count of conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals and commit wire fraud and bribery, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, which each carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison; and one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

At an afternoon press conference, the governor finally addressed the news, at least in part: “I’m going to take the time I need to review this indictment, see what’s embedded with this, but my No. 1 responsibility is make sure that the people of New York City and the state of New York are served.” She says she’ll have more to say later:

The indictment includes a number of eye-popping details, such as how Adams acknowledged in a text the weirdness of traveling everywhere via Istanbul:

He also allegedly signed off on something a staffer had falsely assumed he would recognize as crossing a line:

At a late-morning press conference, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams officially detailed the federal charges against Eric Adams, laying out a winding decadelong corruption scheme that saw the mayor accepting luxury-travel benefits as well as illegal foreign political donations to his campaign from Turkish officials attempting to curry favor with him. During his remarks, Williams said the mayor knowingly solicited illegal campaign donations and perks such as “free international business-class flights and opulent hotel rooms in foreign cities” and intentionally excluded these gifts from his annual public-disclosure forms. “Now, I want to be clear. These upgrades and freebies were not part of some frequent-flyer or loyalty program available to the general public. As we allege, this was a multiyear scheme to buy favor with a single New York City politician on the rise: Eric Adams,” Williams said.

Williams also alleged that Adams fast-tracked the opening of a Manhattan high-rise intended to house the new Turkish consulate on behalf of a Turkish official he was in contact with. The building was under significant scrutiny from the FDNY, which thought the structure was unsafe. The indictment alleges that Adams pressured the fire department to allow the building to open despite these concerns.

“The conduct alleged in the indictment — the foreign money, the corporate money, the years of concealment — is a grave breach of the public’s trust. Public office is a privilege. We allege that Mayor Adams abused that privilege and broke the law — laws that are designed to ensure that officials like him serve the people. Not the highest bidder, not a foreign bidder, and certainly not a foreign power,” Williams said. “These are bright-red lines, and we allege that the mayor crossed them again and again for years.”

Adams gave brief remarks to the assembled media Wednesday morning, standing shoulder to shoulder with some of his most steadfast supporters.
Amid shouts from protesters armed with megaphones, Adams remained defiant in light of the newly unsealed indictment, which reveals that he faces five federal charges, including bribery. “The actions that have unfolded over the last ten months at least, the commentary, the demonizing. This did not surprise us that we reached this day,” he said.

Adams urged New Yorkers to wait to hear his side of the story before making a final judgment. “In about 30 minutes, you’re going to hear a story of the case that is in front of us. The story will come from the federal prosecutors, and I ask to wait and hear our side to this narrative,” he said. The mayor indicated that he has no plans to step down as calls for his resignation mount. “My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”

A taste of the heckling:

Two excerpts from the indictment overview:

ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, also sought and received other improper benefits from some of the same co-conspirators who funneled straw donations to his campaigns. In particular, a senior official in the Turkish diplomatic establishment (the “Turkish Official”), who facilitated many straw donations to ADAMS, also arranged for ADAMS and his companions to

receive free or discounted travel on Turkey’s national airline (the “Turkish Airline”), which is owned in significant part by the Turkish government, to destinations including France, China, Sri

Lanka, India, Hungary, and Turkeyitself. The Turkish Official and other Turkish nationals further arranged for ADAMS and his companions to receive, among other things, free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment while in Turkey .

In September 2021, the Turkish Official told ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, that it was his turn to repay the Turkish Official, by pressuring the New York City Fire Department (“FDNY”) to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consular building-a 36-story skyscraper without a fire inspection, in time for a high-profile visit by Turkey’s president. At the time, the building would have failed an FDNY inspection. In exchange for free travel and other travel-related bribes in 2021 and 2022 arranged by the Turkish Official, ADAMS did as instructed.

Because of ADAMS’s pressure on the FDNY, the FDNY official responsible for the FDNY’s assessment of the skyscraper’s fire safety was told that he would lose his job if he failed to

acquiesce, and, after ADAMS intervened, the skyscraper opened as requested by the Turkish Official.

The 57-page indictment has been unsealed, and Eric Adams is the only listed defendant. As Sean Piccoli notes, the allegations stretch back ten years:

Eric Adams took bribes from foreign nationals for the better part of a decade, from his time as the Brooklyn borough president right through his election four years ago as mayor, continuing into his time in City Hall, according to a federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.

Adams, who maintains his innocence, is charged with five felonies: One count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive contributions from foreign nationals; one count of wire fraud; two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national; and one count of bribery.

The court papers allege that Adams, beginning in 2014, “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel” as well as illegal contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign from foreigners that were concealed through straw donors.

Much of the indictment pertains to Adams’s ties to Turkey.

As the city awaits the unsealing of the indictment against Adams, deputy mayor Phil Banks avoided questions from the press Thursday morning. In a video from NY1, Banks ignored repeated inquiries about his own possible legal peril from the outlet by choosing, instead, to talk about the New York Knicks:

Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will be addressing the media at 11:30 a.m. A brief news release made no mention of Adams specifically but said the scheduled press conference is intended to announce “significant public corruption charges.”

For those who looked closely, there have long been indications of Adams’s tendency to attract controversy. Prior to becoming mayor, the former state senator and Brooklyn borough president had become known for his attention-grabbing antics as well as his friendliness with figures on the sketchier side of the Democratic political machine.In 2021, David Freedlander published a piece ahead of the mayoral primary that took a look at Adams’s past and what it could mean for the city’s future:

Adams, a Brooklyn native who had recently become a state senator after two decades in the NYPD, wasn’t having it.

“I don’t know how some of you are living to tell you the truth. With $79,000, you qualify for public assistance. This is a joke,” he said in a speech on the floor of the State Senate.

“We are not being paid enough,” he continued. “Don’t be insulted for yourselves. You should be insulted for your children, that you are not allowed to give your children an affordable, decent form of living.”

Politicians are not supposed to admit that they are interested in money for anything other than funding their campaigns. They are there to serve, after all. And they are especially not supposed to admit they are interested in money when they are making more than the median salary in the state for six months of work and their job comes with all sorts of perks, including per diems when they work in Albany. But Adams was willing to go there.  

In another piece published earlier this year, Freedlander profiled Frank Carone, Adams’s former chief of staff whose ties to the mayor have helped to elevate his new consulting firm:

Like Adams, Carone took an unusual delight in his new job. While the role is usually about managing downward, keeping the bureaucratic trains running, Carone’s Instagram feed showed a man living his best life: speaking at a conference in Istanbul, touring the Holy City with the mayor of Jerusalem, talking whiskey with Liev Schreiber, hanging out on the sidelines of New York Giants games. At the same time, powerful developers and businessmen say Carone was remarkably responsive to their needs, with an ability to get any government official on the phone and smooth things that needed smoothing. “Things he got involved in got done,” said one lobbyist. “Things he didn’t, didn’t.”

Carone’s priorities reflected that Adams, for all his talk of being the new face of the national Democratic Party, was at heart an old-school Brooklyn clubhouse pol. Before 2022, Carone had never spent a day working in an elected official’s office, and in his career he had represented any number of outer-borough scoundrels, including slumlords, insurance fraudsters, and disreputable operators of homeless shelters. People in the city’s permanent government wondered if Carone was treating his time in power as a chance to level up, prospecting for richer clients — suspicions that hardened when after just nine months he announced he was quitting to run both a consultancy, Oaktree Solutions, and Adams’s reelection campaign. One labor leader told me, “It’s the worst smash-and-grab operation in the history of city government.”

Adams’s attorney, Alex Spiro — whose former clientele includes Elon Musk, Jay-Z, Alec Baldwin, and Mr. Beast — blasted investigators in a statement where he revealed that they had seized the mayor’s phone for the second time in less than a year.

“Federal agents appeared this morning at Gracie Mansion in an effort to create a spectacle (again) and take Mayor Adams phone (again),” the statement reads. “He has not been arrested and looks forward to his day in court. They send a dozen agents to pick up a phone when we would have happily turned it in.”

Nearly a dozen federal agents descended on Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, before dawn on Thursday morning, according to the New York Times.

A group of roughly a dozen men and women in business attire arrived outside the entrance to Gracie Mansion in S.U.V.s, at least one of which had a federal law enforcement parking placard on its dashboard. Several carried briefcases, backpacks or duffel bags as they entered the grounds, and one had what appeared to be a camera bag.

Frank Carone, the mayor’s longtime attorney and a fixer in the city, was seen coming out of the mansion late last night.

Not necessarily on Thursday, according to CNN:

The mayor is expected to have several days to turn himself in, according to sources familiar with the case. He’s not expected to appear in court Thursday: Prosecutors previously informed his attorneys that if charged, he would be summoned to surrender at a future date, multiple sources told CNN.

CNN also reports that the mayor’s attorneys tried to convince Justice Department officials not to seek the indictment. It didn’t work:

Lawyers for Adams met with senior officials of the Justice Department last week in a bid to stave off federal criminal charges, multiple sources familiar with the meeting told CNN.

The meeting between Adams lawyers Boyd Johnson and Brendan MacGuire came after they met with the US attorneys office in Manhattan and were told prosecutors planned to seek an indictment of the mayor, the sources said. Prosecutors in Washington informed the mayor’s attorneys that their appeal was denied, the sources said.

The New York Post reports that several other people may be named, including two of the mayor’s aides who previously had their homes raided by federal agents:

Two more in Mayor Eric Adams’ inner circle are expected to be named among others in a historic indictment set to be unsealed Thursday morning, The Post has learned. Brianna Suggs, the key fundraiser during Adams 2021 mayoral campaign and Winnie Greco, his current Director of Asian Affairs, are expected to be named in the indictment. At least three others are also expected to be charged, however, The Post could not immediately confirm their identities.

The indictment won’t be unsealed on Thursday morning. According to sources who spoke with The City, the charges are, at least in part, about Adams taking foreign money:

Sources who are familiar with the matter told THE CITY that Adams is being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for taking actions in his official capacity after receiving donations from foreign sources.

The New York Post reports that the charges “are believed to be connected to allegations of the Turkish government illegally funneling money into his mayoral campaign in exchange for approval of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan, according to sources.” Two sources also told the Daily News that the charges came out of that investigation.

Sounds like it was a little awkward:

The mayor has released a defiant videotaped statement addressing the pending charges. (Adams may have recorded the video before the news of the indictment was first reported.)

“It is now my belief that the federal government intends to charge me with federal crimes,” he says in the video. “If so, these charges will be entirely false, based on lies.”

“If I am charged, I know I am innocent. I will request an immediate trial so that New Yorkers can hear the truth.”

“I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength, and my spirit,” he adds.

He says refusing to step down is about respecting voters: “I put the people of New York before party and politics. Now, If I am charged, many may say I should resign because I cannot manage the city while fighting the case. Make no mistake, you elected me to lead this city and lead it, I will.”

Here’s the video:

The mayor gave a statement to the New York Post:

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams said in a statement to the Post. “If I am charged, I am innocent, and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”

If Adams were to step down in the aftermath of the indictment, the City Charter states that he would be succeeded by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who would become acting mayor. Williams, who has served in the role since 2019, previously ran for governor in 2022; he came in second to Kathy Hochul. In the event that Williams chooses not to serve in that role, comptroller Brad Lander, who has mounted a primary bid against Adams, would be next in line to replace him.

Yes. If Adams does not resign, Hochul has the power to remove him from office, per the state constitution. As The City notes:

Gov. Kathy Hochul has the ability to remove New York City’s mayor from office, but the governor’s power to replace New York City’s mayor has never been used. …

The second option for removing the mayor is an “inability committee.” As laid out in the charter, the committee would be made up of the corporation counsel (an attorney representing the city — and a position that is currently vacant), the city comptroller (Brad Lander, who is running against Adams for mayor in 2025), the speaker of the City Council (Adrienne Adams), one deputy mayor (selected by the current mayor, in this case Adams) and the borough president who has served the most consecutive years in office (currently Queens Borough President Donovan Richards). Once convened, the committee could vote to form a panel of the entire City Council, which could then vote to declare Adams temporarily or permanently “unable” to “discharge the powers and duties of the office of the mayor,” according to Section 10 of the charter. To take that step, the Council would need at least two-thirds of its members to vote for removal.

The first signs of trouble for Adams came on November 2, 2023, with an ominous round of raids targeting people close to City Hall. While he was traveling to Washington, D.C., for a White House meeting with mayors about the migrant crisis, FBI agents were executing search warrants at the homes of three Adams associates, including his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, for dealings involving the Turkish government.

In New Jersey, agents took cell phones and other materials from the homes of Rana Abbasova, director of protocol in the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on the mayor-elect’s transition committee. Agents left Suggs’s home in Crown Heights with three iPhones, two laptops, and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams,” the New York Times reported.

Alerted to the Suggs raid by a staff member, Adams turned around after landing in D.C. and boarded a flight back to New York. He told reporters the following week that he had skipped the migrant summit out of concern for 25-year-old Suggs. On the following Monday, FBI agents approached Adams as he left an event at New York University and confiscated two cell phones and an iPad that were in his possession.

“As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law … I have nothing to hide,” the mayor said afterward, a refrain he used repeatedly, with variations, as the Turkey probe advanced and other investigations materialized.

Another sweep came on September 4. Federal agents conducted early-morning raids at the homes of senior city officials including NYPD commissioner Edward Caban; Deputy Mayor for public safety Philip Banks III; his brother, schools chancellor David Banks; first deputy mayor Sheena Wright, David Banks’s fiancée; and a top mayoral adviser, Timothy Pearson. Caban’s identical twin brother, James, and a younger Banks sibling, Terence, also had phones confiscated.

The coordinated raids came in support of two investigations unrelated to Turkey but run primarily out of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.
One probe is looking into a consulting firm run by Terence Banks, whose fortunes rose when his older brothers joined the Adams administration, and the other is focused on whether James Caban had used his family ties to the police commissioner to gain work for his security business, according to news reports.

Edward Caban resigned ten days after the raid. His brother and the Banks siblings have all denied wrongdoing. David Banks later resigned as schools chancellor.