New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday on federal charges alleging that he took bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan alleged in the indictment that Adams “compounded his gains” from the illegal contributions by gaming the city’s matching funds program, which provides a generous match for small-dollar donations.
FBI agents entered the mayor’s official residence and seized his phone early Thursday, hours before the indictment was made public.
The indictment capped off an extraordinary few weeks in New York City, as federal investigators have homed in on members of Adams’ inner circle, producing a drumbeat of raids, subpoenas and high-level resignations that have thrust City Hall into crisis.
Adams’ lawyer said the mayor wanted to turn himself in Thursday, but is now hoping to appear in court Friday or Monday
Speaking to reporters, Alex Spiro suggested federal authorities waved off his immediate surrender. He also accused them of leaking word of Adams’ indictment to the news media.
“We’ve known for some time that they intended to bring a case against the mayor one way or another,” Spiro said, standing with Adams outside the mayor’s official residence.
Spiro said that after having had a chance to read the indictment, “you could almost picture them trying to cobble this together and try to tell a story so that they could say, ‘corruption, corruption’ at a press conference.”
He criticized the indictment as a jumble of accusations and innuendo he said was “meant to mislead” the public about Adams. He argued that the conduct described in the charges either wasn’t illegal or didn’t involve the mayor.
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The Turkish consulate was asking for “a courtesy,” not payback, when it wanted Adams’s help in skipping a fire inspection, Spiro said, adding: “New Yorkers do this all the time.” Adams said he’d see what he could do and, a few days later, ignored a follow-up phone call from the consulate, Spiro asserted.
“There is no corruption. This is not a real case,” Spiro said.
Officials who enforce the city’s public campaign financing program and can impose penalties for violations said they’re reviewing Adams’ indictment.
“The allegations detailed in the indictment are very serious, for New Yorkers and for those of us working to make our elections more accessible, transparent, and accountable to our city,” Frederick Schaffer, chair of the city’s Campaign Finance Board, said in a statement.
“While the mayor is presumed innocent until proven guilty and deserves due process, the board will nonetheless review all relevant information, including but not limited to the indictment, in order to uphold our city’s campaign finance rules and protect taxpayer dollars.”
The White House pushed back against claims by the New York City mayor that he was targeted because of his objections to the administration’s efforts to address immigration and border crossings, saying the actions by the Justice Department were independent of politics.
“The president was clear, even when he was running in 2020, that he was going to make sure that DOJ is independent and the DOJ is handling this case independently,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Thursday’s briefing.
Adams’ administration has been bogged down with attempts to house tens of thousands of international migrants who overwhelmed the city’s homeless shelters, with Adams at odds with President Joe Biden over funding and a strategy to handle the influx of new residents.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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