A federal indictment charging New York City Mayor Eric Adams with a decade-long campaign contribution scheme, bribery and other crimes was unsealed Thursday morning, hours after FBI raided his Gracie Mansion residence and seized his phone.
The 57-page indictment accuses Adams of five criminal counts related to obtaining illegal donations for his 2021 mayoral campaign, and accepting free luxury travel dating as back as far as 2016, when he was Brooklyn borough president.
Much of the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan centers on the Turkish community, Turkish businessmen and a senior Turkish government official who allegedly exerted influence on Adams, who is accused of accepting well over $100,000 in foreign travel benefits and illegal campaign donations.
“Public office is a privilege,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damien Williams at a news conference detailing the charges.
“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.”
The indictment says a “senior official in the Turkish diplomatic establishment” facilitated illegal campaign donations to Adams, and also arranged for the mayor and his companions to receive free or discounted travel on Turkey’s national airline, which is owned in large part by that country’s government, to France, China, Sri Lanka, India, Hungary and Turkey.
In September 2021, the indictment alleges, the Turkish official told Adams “that it was his turn to repay” that official by pressuring the New York City Fire Department to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consulate building, which is 36-stories-tall, “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,” the indictment says.
Adams “did as he was instructed,” and an FDNY official “was told that he would lose his job if he failed to acquiesce,” the indictment says.
The building then opened as requested, according to the indictment.
“I look forward to defending myself and defending the people of this city, as I’ve done throughout my entire professional career,” Adams said outside Gracie Mansion while flanked by supporters, after the indictment was unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The indictment says Adams, a 64-year-old former police captain, received more than $10 million in public matching funds for campaign contributions by using so-called straw donors in the United States to hide the fact that he was accepting foreign campaign contributions.
Starting in 2014, and “Thereafter, for nearly a decade, Adams sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him,” the indictment says.
“By 2018, Adams — who had by then made known his plans to run for Mayor of New York City — not only accepted, but sought illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals,” the indictment says.
“As Adams’s prominence and power grew, his foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him, particularly when, in 2021, it became clear that Adams would become New York City’s mayor.”
“Adams agreed, providing favorable treatment in exchange for the illicit benefits he received. After his inauguration as Mayor of New York City, Adams soon began preparing for his next election, including by planning to solicit more illegal contributions and granting requests from those who supported his 2021 mayoral campaign with such donations.”
Adams is charged in the indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by a foreign national.
He also is charged with wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, and bribery.
Adams is at least the second New York mayor to be criminally charged while still in office.
And he is the first official in his administration to be charged as a result of multiple pending investigations that have ensnared the New York Police Department and the city’s top schools’ official.
Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro, in a statement Thursday morning, said, “Federal agents appeared this morning at Gracie Mansion in an effort to create a spectacle (again) and take Mayor Adams phone (again).”
“He has not been arrested and looks forward to his day in court,” Spiro said. “They send a dozen agents to pick up a phone when we would have happily turned it in.”
On Wednesday, before news of the indictment first broke, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., called on the mayor to resign, saying the “flood of resignations and vacancies” resulting from various federal probes of administration officials “are threatening government functions.”
“For the good of the city he should resign,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
A growing number of elected officials and other political figures in New York also called on Adams to step down, among them city Comptroller Brad Lander and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who are both running for mayor next year, and former Comptroller Scott Stringer, who is weighing a run for City Hall.
If Adams resigns before his first term in office ends, he will be succeeded by New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams as acting mayor.
Williams in a statement issued Thursday said, “I feel the same disbelief and indignation that I know many New Yorkers feel, upset that this is where our city is in this moment.”
“This is a painful time, and the looming unknowns and uncertainties only add to the confusion and chaos at City Hall in an untenable situation,” Williams said. “Justice presumes innocence until proven guilty, at the same time, these charges are even more sweeping and severe than imagined. In the face of this evidence, it is not enough to deflect blame and deny responsibility.
“It is federal officials’ obligation to prove their case, and 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.”
There are multiple federal investigations into Adams and people affiliated with him and his administration.
On Tuesday, city schools Chancellor David Banks told Adams he expected to retire at the end of 2024.
Banks’ surprise announcement came weeks after federal authorities seized electronic devices belonging to him, his brother, Deputy Mayor Phil Banks, and his fiancee, Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright.
Another Banks brother, Terence, is being investigated by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office in connection with the allocation of city contacts worth millions of dollars to the companies who received them after hiring Terence Banks’ consulting firm.
The same prosecutors’ office is probing whether James Caban, the twin brother of former New York Police Commissioner Edward Caban, exploited his ties to his brother and the NYPD to benefit his nightclub security business.
Edward Caban resigned as police commissioner on Sept. 12, a week after his own phone was seized by federal investigators.
Three days after Edward Caban resigned, Adam’s mayoral counsel and chief legal advisor, Lisa Zornberg, resigned, saying she had “concluded that I can no longer serve in my position.”
Last Friday, federal investigators executed search warrants at the homes of Thomas Donlon, the acting NYPD commissioner.
Donlon, who is a former top FBI counterterrorism official in New York, said this week that the investigators “took materials that came into my possession approximately 20 years ago and are unrelated to my work with the New York City Police Department.”