Eric Adams is now the first sitting New York mayor to face criminal charges. Yet his worst actions — cutting budgets for schools, libraries, childcare, and anything else he could in his single-minded quest for more austerity — have been perfectly legal.
Eric Adams exiting federal court after his arraignment in New York, on September 27, 2024. (Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
It was always going to end up like this. That Eric Adams would face an indictment for abusing public office for private gain was a foregone conclusion for anyone paying attention to how Hizzoner operates. The mayor surrounded himself with convicted felons (they make a great branzino) and elevated unindicted coconspirators and those with conspicuously expensive taste into senior roles in his administration. As Adams often says, he values loyalty above all else, and he practices what he preaches: after all, what’s a repeated pattern of law-breaking between friends?
The allegations started well before he took the city’s highest office. During Adams’s tenure as chair of the State Senate Racing, Gaming, and Wagering Committee, a 2010 report from the state inspector general implicated him in a bid-rigging scheme for a gambling venue and racetrack in Queens. Adams said it was a hit job by Republicans, but it was just the first of several close calls. From then on, the New York politician was curiously close to corruption scandals and con men.
By 2020, it was hard for Adams’s fellow borough presidents to discuss the former cop’s jet-setting lifestyle without sounding accusatory. As former presidential candidate Andrew Yang said to Adams during a debate, “We all know you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone.” Before the 2021 Democratic primary even took place, it came out that Adams had been improperly filing financial disclosure forms and pushing the boundaries of ethics laws for years.
So when Adams landed the city’s biggest gig, the only question was how the feds would get him. Who would turn informant, where would the mayor get sloppy? We don’t yet have all the answers, but we now know that it is his relationship with Turkish nationals that did him in.
In an indictment made public on Thursday, the Southern District of New York charged the mayor with five crimes: One count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicit foreign contributions, and accept bribes; one count of wire fraud; two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national; and one count of bribery. It is the first time a sitting New York mayor has faced criminal charges.
The fifty-seven page indictment, unsealed on Thursday, alleges that the mayor performed favors for Turkish nationals in exchange for $123,000 worth of international Turkish Airlines plane tickets and luxury accommodations, as well as used these ties to solicit illegal campaign donations from them, which generated matching funds from the city, part of the $10 million in public money his 2021 campaign received.
The indictment alleges that the Turkish nationals’ gifts and donations came with strings attached, with Adams acceding to his benefactors’ requests, including by pressuring Fire Department officials to certify a new high-rise building that would house the Turkish consulate in time for a visit by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, despite the building having enough violations to render it uninhabitable according to the department’s original assessment.
During a press conference Thursday, Manhattan US attorney Damian Williams alleged that Adams directed staffers to solicit the undisclosed benefits and created a fake paper trail to cover his tracks. Exchanges between Adams staffers and Turkish Airlines personnel included in the indictment show staffers knowingly accepting illegal benefits for Adams while also emphasizing the need to make the transactions look “somewhat real” to said personnel.
Williams also alleged that the mayor created fake paper trails to cover his tracks, such as by telling a staffer in an email that he had left them the cash in an envelope to cover a flight he’d already taken, and repeatedly deleted messages that might arouse suspicion. For instance, the indictment includes a 2019 exchange between Adams and Anna Abbasova, an aide and liaison to Turkey and nearby countries, about a possible trip to Turkey. Abbasova told Adams that to be on the “safe side Please Delete all messages you send me,” to which Adams allegedly responded, “Always do.”
In hindsight, there were plenty of clues. There was the time he told a Turkish American website, “When I get elected, you’re going to have your first Turkish Mayor.” Or his claim that New York is “the Istanbul of America.” And his even more baffling cameo in a 2017 Turkish rom-com in which two Turkish businessmen ask him for favors.
But if it’s the Turkish connection that got Adams first, it’s not clear that these are the only criminal charges the mayor will face. The feds have been requesting information about the mayor’s ties to five other countries — Israel, China, Qatar, South Korea, and Uzbekistan — in expansive grand jury subpoenas issued to City Hall in July.
Rumors have long swirled about Adams’s ties to China in particular, with reporters finding evidence of potential straw donor schemes similar to those alleged to have been employed by the Adams campaign with respect to Turkey, much of it connected to Winnie Greco, Adams’s director of Asian affairs, whose home was raided by the FBI in February. And then there are the investigations into the mayor’s associates: what, exactly, is Police Commissioner Edward Caban being accused of that’s serious enough to have led him to resign, and why did his replacement immediately receive a visit from the FBI too?
Adams Worst Actions Were Perfectly Legal
One reason all of this is satisfying is that Adams has been a blight on New York’s working class. He has made life harder for the city’s poor, the city’s homeless, the city’s renters, the city’s parents, the city’s immigrants, the city’s incarcerated. His fealty is to New York’s correctional officers, police, and landlords, and we are all the worse off for it. That he fends off criticism of these allegiances by casting it as racist, as if his policies aren’t hurting black New Yorkers, makes it all the more grating. It’s rare for someone like that to be taken down; seeing him get his comeuppance is supremely enjoyable.
Yet the truth is that all of the policies that make Adams a villain are perfectly legal. It is not a crime to try to defund the public library system. It is legal to cut back on the city’s universal pre-K program. Removing a crucial support for the city’s ballooning population of homeless children is aboveboard. Rolling out dangerously inaccurate technology is apparently fine. Obstructing the federally mandated closure of Rikers Island has yet to come back to bite him. Sweeping homeless people off the streets and out of the subway system is legal.
As for the policies Adams advanced? The way he divided working-class people by leading revanchist panics about the most vulnerable among us? He isn’t facing legal consequences for any of it.
That the political establishment’s answer to the 2020 riots and radicalism of the early pandemic era turned out to be a man who is nothing but ego and bluster and self-promotion, a former cop who ran on “law and order” only to allegedly use the office for criminal purposes while simultaneously appointing white-collar criminals to the highest positions of influence in the city deserves reflection. But as for the policies Adams advanced? The way he divided working-class people by leading revanchist panics about the most vulnerable among us? He isn’t facing legal consequences for any of it, and that is a sobering reality for those of us who want a better New York City.
There are a few paths forward from here. Adams could resign, but as he made clear at an exceptionally crazy press conference yesterday (in the rare moments when he could be heard over protesters calling him a disgrace), he has no intention of doing so. Surrounded by a handful of black leaders but conspicuously few members of his own administration, the mayor insisted that his day-to-day work would remain the same while his lawyers — including Alex Spiro, who is also Elon Musk’s lawyer — handle the case. In New York history, only two mayors have ever resigned: Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950.
Adams could also be removed by New York governor Kathy Hochul. No governor has ever exercised that power — Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered it when he was governor and Jimmy Walker was mayor, but Walker resigned first. Given that Hochul and Adams have worked closely together, she likely doesn’t want to be the first governor to do so. In a statement yesterday, she was guarded about the matter.
“My focus is on protecting the people of New York and ensuring stability in the City,” the governor said. “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 New York City are being well-served by their leaders.”
There is one other mechanism for Adams’s removal as laid out in the New York City charter. Called the “inability committee,” it, too, has never been used, but local officials are reportedly seriously considering it.
The details are wonky, so here’s how the City explains it:
As laid out in the charter, the committee would be made up of the corporation counsel (an attorney representing the city), 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).
The Charter doesn’t specify how the committee would begin, but once convened, the committee could vote to form a panel of the entire City Council — they’d need at least four out of five members to vote yes. That panel would 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.
Now to another potentially dispiriting matter: should Adams leave office before the last week of March, public advocate Jumaane Williams would become the acting mayor, and he would have to schedule a special election. That election would be open to anyone, and there is one person in particular who stands to benefit: disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo has apparently stepped up his plans to mount a mayoral run in the wake of the indictment. While Cuomo’s spokespeople are still denying that the former governor is making plans for a mayoral run, articles keep appearing with quotes from anonymous sources stating that he has privately said he would do so if a special election were held. Cuomo only wants to run if he feels he’s a shoo-in, and an open election rather than a Democratic primary would almost certainly be an easier venue for a figure polarizing to so many on the Left. The former governor also still has millions of dollars in leftover campaign funds.
That isn’t to say Cuomo would necessarily win if he ran. His baggage is very real: he faced allegations of sexual harassment serious enough that, while insisting on his innocence, nonetheless led him to resign in 2021. There is still an ongoing investigation into his handling of the COVID pandemic, particularly his role in the large number of deaths in the state’s nursing homes. His supporters’ strategy is to make his victory seem like a done deal, and we shouldn’t help them with that; there are left-wing and progressive challengers in the race (or considering joining it) who would be far better for working-class New Yorkers.
But as we move forward, it must be with an understanding that Cuomo has a real shot of winning. Polling is far from perfect on this matter, but what does exist suggests he has a sizable base of support; after all, in electoral politics, name-recognition is key, and our former governor has that above everyone else.
The next week may decide whether we will have a special election. If Adams stays in office while fighting the case and no one is willing to remove him, the public will continue suffering under his mismanagement, with the city’s agencies bleeding talent and public trust as we await next year’s regularly scheduled election. All the while, Adams will carry on doing what he does best: reveling in the spotlight.
He once told a reporter that he considers himself the city’s first influencer mayor, and he’s right about that. The only problem is that he was doing promo for another country, while an elected official of this one. On the bright side, once he enters the private sector, he’ll have plenty of far more lucrative promotional opportunities.