Eric Adams, mayor of the City of New York, has been indicted on federal charges including bribery, wire fraud, and illegal campaign contributions, all but sinking his political future. I’m not going to get into all of the particulars of the indictment, because you can read about that in all manner of publications, or just take a gander yourself. Instead, you’ll get some of my characteristic analysis, about the indictment, about the Adams investigations generally, and about what happens now.
First off, I’m going to anger some folks by saying that this isn’t quite the smoking gun that a lot of people were practically pining for. Now, none of it looks good, and Adams’ push to represent this as practically a fishing expedition targeting him alternately for being Black, too forceful, or having criticized the White House for its migrant-accommodation efforts is probably short-sighted and certainly strained as a defense. The latter bit in particular is a wild claim that closely resembles MAGA dogma about a politicized Justice Department lashing out at political opponents, whether the mayor has stopped to think about that or not.
Still, with the amount of noise that’s been generated around this, he did not proverbially take a big sack of money in exchange for clear-cut favors. The most damning allegations revolve around some of the things we already knew about: that Adams received gifts, upgrades, and services worth thousands, which he did not disclose and attempted to conceal; that he received illegal donations from Turkish officials, which allowed him to defraud the city’s public matching funds program; and that in exchange he took actions including fast-tracking FDNY safety clearance of a building where the Turkish consulate wanted to open a new space.
A lot of this seems like it was coordinated through staffers and you could certainly make the argument that, from a pure legal standpoint, there’s no clear quid-pro-quo, particularly since the Supreme Court has busied itself over the last few years chipping away at the ability for prosecutors to effectively pursue public corruption.
Of course, Adams himself did not exactly go out of his way to be transparent and cooperative in the FBI’s inquiry. One of the most absurd details in the indictment is the fact that, when federal agents seized his electronic devices in November of last year, he did not have his personal cell phone with him, which is what he’d allegedly been using to engage in these schemes. When he brought the phone the next day, he said he had just changed the password “to prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone,” but then managed to accidentally forget the password, rendering the phone inaccessible to law enforcement.
All that said, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not just this specific investigation and looming indictment that has swirled around Adams. As we explored just last week, the feds raided an entire swath of Adams’ top leadership as part of investigations that, as far as anyone can tell, have nothing to do with this Turkey situation. They are wholly separate federal inquiries, which now seem so numerous it’s hard to keep track of them. None of that is really that surprising given the extent to which Adams has hired his old buddies from the force and others that have been in his orbit for years, people who were more used to nepotism and favor-trading in the far dimmer light of a borough president’s office than the city mayoralty.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter that much whether we think the prosecution will be successful or not. I wouldn’t call it frivolous but it’s not a slam dunk either, but really what matters here is that Adams has become the first NYC mayor ever to be indicted while in office, and that everyone can smell blood in the water. His political opponents are ecstatic and even some putative allies are beginning to inch away from the coming feeding frenzy.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (no relation) — who’s certainly had some pointed disagreements with the mayor, but who nonetheless has been an ally — did not call on Adams to step down per se, but said he should “seriously and honestly consider whether full attention can be given to our deserving New Yorkers who need our government to be sound and stable.” That’s an artful and more diplomatic way of essentially saying the same thing: his political capital is depleted, and he is not going to be able to govern effectively while fighting off federal charges. The City of Yes housing proposals, which I’ve covered before, got voted up by the City Planning Commission just this week, but are going to have a bruising time getting through a full council vote. Here’s where a mayor can expend some political capital to move things along, but he’s got none to spare.
So what happens now? Adams seems extremely resistant to the idea of resigning, but I think he’s liable to pull a Cuomo if the walls close in — he’ll resign abruptly and then go into full counterattack mode, blaming investigators, subordinates, and political allies he’ll accuse of having stabbed him in the back, potentially setting himself up for some future run. If he simply refuses to step aside, there are a couple mechanisms to remove him by force. The most straightforward is simply for Gov. Kathy Hochul to do it, using a provision in state law that allows the governor to remove a mayor who’s been charged with a crime. So far, she has avoided commenting in any specific way about these issues. There’s no recall provision in New York law, nor anything like an impeachment; the City Charter does allow the formation of a so-called “inability committee,” but this would require participation of the corporation counsel — which we don’t currently have — and a deputy mayor picked by Adams himself.
If he does resign or is removed, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams would become acting mayor, and the city would set a nonpartisan special election to serve out the rest of Adams’ term — that is, anyone could run in this one big election regardless of party affiliation, and the winner would then be mayor through what would be the next full term starting at the beginning of 2026, after the full election in November of next year. So far, a few would-be Adams challengers have thrown their hats in the ring, most notably Comptroller Brad Lander, former comptroller Scott Stringer, and state senators Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos. Now that Adams is teetering on the edge, we’re likely to see a lot more people jump in. It’ll be, if nothing else, an interesting next few months.
Read more of our political coverage here.
