New York Mayor Eric Adams charged with bribery, fraud and soliciting foreign donations

New York Mayor Eric Adams was officially indicted on Thursday with five charges related to bribery, wire fraud and soliciting contributions from foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official to fund his mayoral campaign in 2021. That same year, the FBI opened an investigation into these campaign contributions. In exchange for these funds, the Democrat allegedly expedited the permits for the new headquarters of the Turkish consulate in New York, and granted other requests.

For a decade, Adams sought and accepted “valuable improper benefits,” including luxury international travel, from foreign businesspeople and a senior Turkish official who sought “to gain influence over him,” states the indictment, which was unsealed Thursday morning. Indeed, Adams’ pressure on the city’s Fire Department expedited the occupancy permit for the consulate, a brand-new skyscraper that was suspected of several security breaches, the indictment says.

The indictment alleges that Adams accepted illegal contributions to his campaign in 2018, when he announced his plans to run for mayor. These contributions were made by straw donors — including an unknown Turkish university with a campus in Washington — and foreign agents, according to the investigation led by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and carried out by the FBI. The indictment is similar to the case against veteran Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who was convicted in July of 16 crimes, including receiving bribes from Egypt in exchange for preferential treatment.

The indictment was unsealed by the Southern District Court of New York, in Manhattan, just a few steps from City Hall and the mayor’s official residence, which FBI agents searched Thursday morning, seizing his cell phone. Adams — who before becoming mayor was a New York State senator and police captain — is now the first mayor of New York to be charged while in office.

Adams has denied the charges, and asked New Yorkers to wait to hear his version of events before judging him. The indictment comes just a few months before the municipal elections on November 4, when Adams is hoping to win a second term. The Democrat — who took office in January 2022 on a platform of law and order — said he has no intention of resigning, and his lawyer confirmed that he is cooperating with the justice system. After The New York Times reported Wednesday night that Adams was set to face federal charges, without providing more details, the mayor released a video in which he maintained his innocence and said that defending New Yorkers would “always” make him a “target.” Adams called the charges “entirely false” and “based on lies.”

The charges were filed shortly after federal prosecutors demanded that the city reveal all communications maintained by the Adams administration with Turkey and five other countries. The indictment caps a tumultuous few weeks in the city government, after several senior officials — all of them close to Adams, including members of the police department — resigned after being investigated for corruption.

At a press conference after the charges were filed, prosecutor Damian Williams described Adams’ conduct as a “grave breach of the public’s trust.” The scandal also threatens to hurt the Democratic Party, and — if only to distance herself from the affair — fellow Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came forward to call for his immediate resignation on Wednesday. Ocasio-Cortez — who is from the progressive wing of the party — and Adams — a centrist Democrat with a strong personal profile — have never hidden their differences, but the indictment has forced New York Democrats to try to erect a firewall in the final stretch of the campaign for the November elections.

Adams has been a kind of loose cannon in the Democratic Party, prone to bombastic initiatives that never got off the ground, such as his security plans for the city’s subway or hiring friendly robots as urban patrols. When he was elected mayor, he faced the challenge of revitalizing the city’s economy, which had been hit by the coronavirus pandemic. But his ambitious plans have been slowed by issues such as public insecurity, which he once claimed to be able to defeat, and the immigration crisis, with tens of thousands of migrants arriving in the city.

His administration has been criticized for militarizing the subway, locking up homeless people with mental problems in psychiatric hospitals against their will and increasing the city’s budget deficit. But none of these setbacks compare with being the first mayor of New York to be indicted.

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