The Biden-Harris Justice Department’s prosecution of Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of the nation’s biggest, most high-profile city, is as intriguing as it is historic. City Hall has had its share of colorful, even roguish chief executives, but before Thursday, none had ever been criminally charged while in office, much less seen Gracie Mansion searched by a swarm of federal agents.
Damian Williams, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), announced a five-count corruption indictment. In a series of schemes tracing back a decade, when he was Brooklyn borough president, Adams is alleged to have put his growing political influence and potential on sale, particularly to foreign bidders. The most energetic of these were from Turkey — emissaries of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s unsavory regime and well-heeled businesspeople adjacent to it.
The corruption alleged is less eye-popping than assiduous. Adams is not accused of any one big score; rather, the charges depict constant exploitation of his position for air-travel upgrades, comped suites in luxury hotels, and free cars, chauffeurs, and sightseeing, mainly for Adams and his girlfriend. And with an audacity and recklessness that appear to have increased as the years went by — as he rose from mayoral hopeful, to mayor, to Democratic Party eminence — Adams and his aides, the indictment alleges, schemed to circumvent federal and state restrictions against foreign and corporate political contributions.
As the SDNY tells it, once the Turks got their hooks into Hizzoner, they squeezed him for favors. The most egregious of these is said to involve a Midtown high-rise that Ankara wanted up and running as its consulate in time for Erdoğan to show it off during his 2021 visit to address the United Nations General Assembly. A Turkish official allegedly admonished the mayor that it was time to return the regime’s many favors, and Adams did as he was told — making clear to top city fire-department officials that they’d lose their coveted posts if the building did not pass inspection despite a slew of safety concerns.
Among the indictment’s most damning moments for him, if proved true, is the laugh-out-loud allegation that, upon surrendering a smartphone rife with incriminating texts, he told the FBI that he couldn’t unlock it because he had just changed the security code and, as luck would have it, couldn’t remember the new number.
The feds have charged the mayor with conspiracy to commit fraud, bribery, and unlawful campaign financing — mainly through straw donors to conceal foreign sources. Along with substantive allegations of soliciting foreign donations, taking bribes, and wire fraud — that perennial federal favorite — the charges aggregate to a potential 45 years’ imprisonment. In the event of conviction, the sentence would not be that severe under federal guidelines, but it would undoubtedly be stiff.
The mayor is defending himself vigorously in public. In so doing, he may end up only creating more vulnerabilities for himself.
Nevertheless, his pushback is that the Biden-Harris Justice Department, his fellow partisans, are out to get him because he has used his unique national profile to spotlight the disaster the administration has made of border security — with the result that New York is overrun with a “migrant” population nearing a quarter million, and all the attendant stress that implies for schools, law enforcement, health-care facilities, and other social services.
While the Biden-Harris DOJ’s reputation for politicized law enforcement is well deserved, count us skeptical. Yes, the allegations in the indictment must be proved in court, and Adams is presumed innocent. Still, investigators have been stalking City Hall for nearly a year, a number of officials in the mayor’s circle have resigned under a cloud, and a good chunk of them are cooperating with the feds. Moreover, Adams’s prosecution, and the certainty that he would accuse the administration of vindictiveness, could only call more attention to Vice President Harris’s role in the collapse of border security — not what she would have wanted six weeks before Election Day.
Adams insists he will not resign — he will continue to lead and campaign for reelection while facing a criminal trial. If that has a familiar ring, Democrats can thank lawfare for the end of honorable resignation in the face of colorable criminal charges as a political norm. Is that good for New Yorkers? Well, if Adams were to be forced out, he’d be replaced — at least until a special election — by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a radical leftist and Black Lives Matter activist who has advocated defunding the police. Pity the Big Apple.