Did New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat and former police captain, accept foreign bribes and foreign campaign contributions?
That’s the key issue in the federal indictment of New York’s mayor just handed down by a federal grand jury led by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
The indictment charges Adams with five felonies under federal law that could result in his spending a long time in prison, including wire fraud, solicitation and receipt of campaign contributions from a foreign national, and outright bribery.
The indictment claims that when Adams became Brooklyn borough president in 2014, he “sought and accepted … valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel” from “wealthy foreign businesspeople including at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him.”
In 2018, when Adams made public his plan to run for mayor, the indictment alleges that he “not only accepted but sought illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals.”
As Adams’ “prominence and power grew” and it became clear that he was going to become mayor of the Big Apple, those “foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on the corrupt relationship,” the indictment alleges. It claims that Adams agreed, “providing favorable treatment” and “granting requests” from them.
The indictment describes an elaborate scheme to hide illegal foreign campaign contributions as well as corporate donations and individual donations exceeding the legal limits.
“Overseas contributors” used “straw donors,” U.S. nationals who falsely claimed they were making the donations that actually were from foreign nationals. Businesses evaded a ban on corporate contributions by using their employees to make those contributions, reimbursing the employees through corporate accounts.
And “wealthy individuals” also used straw donors to evade laws “restricting the amount any one person can donate to a candidate,” the indictment says.
Adams also is accused of defrauding the City of New York through its public funding program for political campaigns. The city has a program that “matches small-dollar contributions from individual city residents with up to eight times their amount in public funds.”
The indictment claims that Adams applied for matching funds for the straw donor contributions he received, despite knowing they were fraudulent donations. The result? Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign received $10 million in public funds that he shouldn’t have gotten.
The indictment says that the same Turkish government official who funneled illegal campaign contributions to Adams, referred to in the indictment as a “senior official in the Turkish diplomatic establishment,” also arranged “free or discounted travel on Turkey’s national airline.”
The official also arranged “free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment” for Adams “and his companions” in Turkey, the indictment says.
Adams’ passport must have quite a number of U.S. Customs stamps in it, since the “free or discounted” travel apparently included trips to “France, China, Sri Lanka, India, Hungary, and Turkey itself.”
To illustrate the “opulent hotels,” the indictment contains photos of some of the hotels Adams stayed in, including two photos of the Bentley Suite bedroom and bathroom at the St. Regis Hotel in Istanbul. Adams paid less than $600 for a suite that normally costs $7,000 for two nights, the indictment alleges.
An essential part of the government’s prosecution is the claim that Adams not only knew about all of this, but that he “and others working at his direction, repeatedly took steps to shield his solicitation and acceptance of these benefits from public scrutiny.”
Those efforts, the indictment alleges, included not disclosing the travel benefits he received on the city’s required annual financial disclosure form as well as creating “fake paper trails, falsely suggesting he had paid” for the travel benefits his generous overseas benefactor financed.
The mayor also was apparently diligent in deleting “messages with others involved in his misconduct” to destroy evidence, although the indictment is replete with email and text messages captured by government investigators.
Part of the quid pro quo for all of these benefits, according to the indictment, was the Turkish official telling Adams that he had to override the New York Fire Department in order “to facilitate the opening of a new Turkish consular building” without a fire inspection “in time for a high-profile visit by Turkey’s president.”
“Adams did as instructed,” the indictment says, and the responsible fire official “was told that he would lose his job if he failed to acquiesce.” The building was allowed to open. If the scheme had not worked, the indictment alleges, the “building would have failed an FDNY inspection.”
The indictment also alleges that Adams successfully intervened on behalf of others who illegally funneled money to him, such as a businessman who wanted help with the city’s “Department of Buildings.”
The five criminal counts against Adams allege violations of 18 U.S.C. §1342 and §1343; 52 U.S.C. §30121 and §30109; and 18 U.S.C. §2 and §666. These federal statutes cover conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, federal program bribery, soliciting and receiving campaign donations from foreign nationals, and plain, old-fashioned bribery.
If you’re wondering how a federal prosecutor has jurisdiction over campaign contributions being made to a local mayoral campaign, it is because 52 U.S.C. §30121 bans all political contributions by foreigners in federal, state, and local elections.
Congress has the constitutional authority for this because of its power over foreign aliens and immigration, which includes the ability to keep them out of all of our elections, not just federal elections.
In the final paragraph of the indictment, the government asks for forfeiture by Adams of “all property, real and personal, that constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to the commission” of his misdeeds. That means that in addition to long jail time, Adams—if convicted—could be on the hook for millions of dollars in criminal forfeiture and civil penalties.
No one should doubt that these are very serious, very substantial charges, although Adams is presumed to be innocent until he is found guilty or decides to plead guilty.
But all of the information in the indictment seems to indicate that federal prosecutors and agents conducted an in-depth, thorough investigation.
If Adams decides to fight the charges instead of trying to negotiate a plea deal with the government, we may be looking at a very long, very expensive process before the case is resolved.
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
