New York City Mayor Eric Adams has a catchphrase of sorts he likes to bandy about when describing his path to Gracie Mansion: “Dyslexic, arrested, rejected—now I’m elected!” As of Thursday morning, the former police captain turned leader of America’s largest city can add another word to his jingle: “Indicted.”
The announcement of federal charges against Adams is not a truly stunning turn of events, not when the storm clouds have been gathering over his administration for months. But it can at least fall under the category of “deeply ironic.” Adams was once heralded as a new face of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, an answer to the leftward tilt that some commentators thought was damaging the party’s brand with swing voters. As an ex-cop, Adams channeled a deluge of funding to his former colleagues at the New York Police Department in the name of fighting crime — but it turns out he was allegedly lining his own pockets without any sign of cognitive dissonance.
The announcement of federal charges against Adams is not a truly stunning turn of events, not when the storm clouds have been gathering over his administration for months
Even before the charges were unsealed, Adams issued a defiant statement denying any wrongdoing. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for [New Yorkers] that I would be a target — and a target I became,” he declared, doing his best impression of former President Donald Trump. After all, how could he be guilty if his only crime was caring too much for the well being of the city?
But that was far from the allegations in the indictment against Adams that the Justice Department unsealed on Thursday morning. He is charged with four crimes: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals; wire fraud; bribery; and two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national. The allegations extend back over a decade to when he was Brooklyn’s borough president all the way through to his mayoralty.
The allegation that Adams took bribes in exchange for political favors to Turkish officials is particularly galling when Adams has centered his political brand around the need to provide “justice and safety” to beleaguered Gothamites. Once in office, he made crime the focal point of his administration, falsely declaring a few months into the job in 2022 that he had “never witnessed crime at this level” in the city. (Major crimes were nowhere near the peak seen in the 1990s, neither nationally nor in New York City.)
Adams’ (sometimes shifting) backstory as someone who overcame run-ins with the law to rise in the NYPD fueled his campaign for City Hall, even as some of his opponents warned that he was a magnet for corruption. Many of the things Adams was alleged to have received stand out in how petty they seem, including free upgrades on Turkish Airlines and luxury hotel stays in exchange for helping clear the way for the construction of a Turkish consulate in the city. But the worst of the allegations is that he raided the public coffers to increase the impact of illegal campaign donations from his benefactors. According to the indictment:
New York City has a matching funds program that matches small-dollar contributions from individual City residents with up to eight times their amount in public funds, to give New Yorkers a greater voice in elections. ADAMS’s campaigns applied for matching funds based on known straw donations, fraudulently obtaining as much as $2,000 in public funds for each illegal contribution. ADAMS and those working at his direction falsely certified compliance with applicable campaign finance regulations despite ADAMS’ s repeated acceptance of straw donations, relying on the concealed nature of these illegal contributions to falsely portray his campaigns as law-abiding. As a result of those false certifications, ADAMS’s 2021 mayoral campaign received more than $10,000,000 in public funds.
That is $10 million in public money that could have gone to almost anything else that needs funding — especially under budget cuts in the Adams administration. It wouldn’t provide enough to cover, say, the billions of dollars that the Metro Transit Authority is now missing thanks to Adams’ ally Gov. Kathy Hochul delaying congestion pricing in Manhattan. It wouldn’t cover the 4,000% increase in police overtime funding — jumping $4 million in 2022 to $155 million over the same period in 2023, according to Gothamist — that went into Hochul and Adams’ decision to flood the transit system with cops to fight a war against bad vibes. But it would cover, though, the roughly $104,000 in fares that turnstile jumpers arrested during the surge of 1,000 police cost the MTA.
That is $10 million in public money that could have gone to almost anything else that needs funding — especially under budget cuts in the Adams administration.
It’s incredible to think as well that, with that much money flowing to the NYPD, there were no indications that Adams might be under investigation himself for what appears to have been a ludicrously transparent scheme. Where is the $6.5 billion in annual funding for the NYPD going if this kind of white-collar crime is happening under its very nose? And what should we make of the seeming belief from the man who is leading them that he is himself beyond the law?
Adams has so far resisted calls to resign even as his allies step down and his administration crumbles around him. It’s more likely that he will attempt to stay in place for as long as possible, even contending with a soon to be crowded primary of candidates to replace him next year. That fits with the level of hubris he’s previously displayed, having claimed that it was God who ordained that he be elected mayor and recently declared “I am City Hall.” But it is in the public’s best interest that he be removed as far away from power as soon as possible.
