The Ankara of America

Unpacking the Eric Adams scandal(s)

Sep 26, 2024

Good morning! It’s Thursday, September 26, 2024. Election Day is 40 days away. The vice presidential debate is five days away.

Let’s head over to the Big Apple — or, as Mayor Eric Adams calls it, “the [every world capital] of America” — for a deep dive into the legal hot water surrounding Adams.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams in 2022. (Photo by Anthony Quintano)

It’s not atypical for New York City mayors to govern amid a cloud of scandal. The administrations of the past five mayors — Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, Rudy Giuliani, David Dinkins, and Ed Koch — have all faced investigations for corruption, in probes that ensnared (and often indicted) numerous top officials.

Reaching even further into history, the city was once synonymous with the notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall political machine. Not one but two Tammany-backed mayors, Jimmy Walker and William O’Dwyer, resigned office and fled the country to avoid criminal charges. “The fact is New York politics were always dishonest — long before my time,” the infamous Boss Tweed said on his deathbed. “There never was a time when you couldn’t buy the Board of Alderman.”

But, in the modern era, no Big Apple mayor has ever been indicted themselves.1 Until now.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Eric Adams, the Democrat who has led America’s largest city since 2022, had been indicted by a federal grand jury. According to The City, 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 indictment is expected to be unsealed as early as today — although that description matches the contours of what is already known about the investigation into Adams. The Times and other outlets have previously reported that federal prosecutors were investigating allegations that Adams’ campaign received illegal foreign contributions from Turkey and that he pressured city officials to approve the Turkish government’s new high-rise consulate despite concerns about the building’s safety.

The investigation into Adams and his deputies — which has also reportedly examined his interactions with China, Israel, South Korea, Qatar, and Uzbekistan — has been one of the most sprawling in the city’s history. In recent weeks, several city officials have resigned amid new revelations about the campaign finance probe, as well as a pair of unrelated investigations into the brothers of the city’s schools chancellor and police commissioner. Both of those officials have since resigned, as have Adams’ health commissioner and chief counsel.

Most of those officials have had their phones seized as part of the investigations — as has Adams himself, twice. Adams’ phone was seized by the FBI late last year, and again this morning in a predawn raid of Gracie Mansion, the mayoral residence. The second seizure came after the indictment, suggesting that the investigation into the mayor is ongoing.

The indictment caps a swift fall from grace for Adams, a former Brooklyn borough president who served for more than 20 years in the NYPD. After his election in 2021, many Democrats viewed him as a rising star: a moderate, Black Democrat who represented the party’s shift to centrism in the Biden era.

Indeed, for a time, the mayor and the president considered each other political allies. “I’m the Biden of Brooklyn,” Adams boasted in 2022, telling Politico: “We’re just like these blue collar guys. He is comfortable around everyday people. I just patterned my campaign around his whole spirit, that he’s an ordinary guy.” Biden, in turn, praised Adams’ approach to crime, embracing the former police captain as evidence that the Democratic Party had turned away from the rhetoric of “defund of police.” (Ironically, of course, it now appears that Adams has brought crime into the highest levels of New York.)

However, the Biden-Adams alliance fractured over immigration, as the mayor — facing an influx of migrants that stretched the city’s budget — grew increasingly critical of the president’s handling of the border. Over time, Adams became known less as the “face of the new Democratic Party” — a moniker he gave himself — and more for his federal investigations and head-scratching comments, such as remarking on reporters’ physical appearances and boasting that New York was the “greatest city on the globe” because “every day you wake up, you can experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open.”

At last month’s Democratic convention, he was nowhere to be found, although he did attend an event hosted by Biden yesterday, a reception for world leaders attending the UN General Assembly this week in New York City. Hours later, news of the mayor’s indictment was reported.

In a video message posted online last night, Adams said that any federal charges against him would be “entirely false” and “based on lies.” He said he would not resign, despite pressure rising on him to do so from local Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If Adams were to resign, the mayorship would pass to New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a self-described democratic socialist, until a special election is held. (Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who also resigned in disgrace, is reportedly eyeing a run.)

If Adams refuses to resign, he could theoretically be removed from office by Cuomo’s successor, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul: the city charter allows the New York governor to remove the New York City mayor from office if the mayor has been indicted. That power has never been invoked, although then-Gov. Franklin Roosevelt threatened to remove the scandal-plagued Walker from office, which sparked his resignation.

More news to know

NPR: Congress approves funding bill to avoid government shutdown
Reuters: Israel rejects US-backed Lebanon ceasefire proposal
WaPo: GOP congressman posts, then deletes, racist comments about Haitians
Politico: ‘A perfect storm of stunning failure’: Senate probe finds huge Secret Service errors at Trump rally
Axios: Senate Democrats prepare Florida and Texas offensives
AP: Speaker Johnson demands Zelenskyy remove Ukraine’s ambassador to US after Pennsylvania visit
Also, speaking of scandal-plagued NYC mayors… CBS: Rudy Giuliani disbarred in D.C., months after disbarment in New York

The day ahead

President Biden will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, where Biden is set to announce new aid for Ukraine. He will also have lunch with VP Harris and deliver remarks on gun violence. Watch at 4:45 p.m. ET
Vice President Harris will have her own meeting with Zelensky. She will also have lunch with Biden and join him for the gun control event. Watch Harris with Zelensky at 3:05 p.m. ET
Former President Trump, Sen. JD Vance, and Gov. Tim Walz have no public events scheduled. (Vance was scheduled to campaign in Georgia, but the events were postponed due to Hurricane Helene.)
The House and Senate are on recess until after the election.

As Law360’s Frank Runyeon pointed out, one previous mayor — A. Oakey Hall — has been indicted, in 1871, for corruption linked to Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. Hall was ultimately acquitted.