Days after the FBI raided the family home in Brooklyn of Brianna Suggs, the very young woman who’d been running Eric Adams’ formidable fundraising operation, the mayor finally addressed the matter and asked New Yorkers to withhold judgment while stressing that he always follows the rules and insists his staff do the same.
“Where there’s smoke there’s not always fire,” he said.
Four months later, the FBI on Thursday raided two houses in the Bronx owned by his City Hall director of Asian affairs, Winnie Greco.
“She was not a fundraiser, she was a volunteer,” Adams said after the raid of Greco, his longtime ally who my colleagues at The City and Documented NY reported helped host eight separate fundraisers for his 2021 mayoral campaign at the New World Mall in Flushing.
The mall — where several employees told reporters that $249 contributions in their names had been made at the behest of their bosses, paid back or outright falsified — was also raided by the feds on Thursday.
Greco was reportedly placed on an indefinite leave Thursday, after complaining about back pains during the raid. The City previously reported that as Asian affairs director, Greco demanded campaign donations in exchange for access to Gracie Mansion and pressured a city employee to do work on a kitchen renovation in her home.
Remarkably, “a person with knowledge of the investigation” into Greco told the Associated Press that it “was being overseen by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and was separate from the criminal inquiry being conducted by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.”
While New Yorkers have been waiting for another shoe to drop in the existing corruption investigation, reportedly involving foreign money from Turkey, a whole new corruption investigation landed, reportedly involving foreign money from China.
That pair of probes, targeting two inner-circle aides who the mayor and his team have referred to as honorary members of his family, recalls Andrew Yang’s memorable debate-stage attack late in the 2021 primary, after Adams had overtaken him as the poll leader:
“Eric, we all know you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone. City, state, even Barack Obama’s Department of Justice investigated you. You’ve achieved the rare trifecta of corruption investigations. Is that really what we want in the next mayor? Did you think you’re going to enter City Hall and it’s going to be different? We all know it’s going to be exactly the same.”
Yang may not have been a serious candidate in his own right, but he wasn’t just blowing smoke here.
In addition to Adams’ federal probes parlay, his buildings commissioner — whose girlfriend runs the nonprofit Gracie Mansion Conservancy controlled by the mayor — is facing corruption charges from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Also facing charges in Manhattan is a group of hustlers, including another former cop and longtime acquaintance of the mayor, who allegedly pumped phony contributions into Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign to score public matching funds they thought would buy them influence in his administration.
Meantime, the feds have charged the Rev. Lamor Whitehead, a convict turned pastor turned defendant again, with allegedly using his close relationship with Adams to try and shake down other scammers and with running a straw-donor scam of his own in 2021 while running to replace his mentor as Brooklyn borough president.
Adams hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing, and prosecutors have taken pains in those last two cases to say that the mayor wasn’t aware of what people were doing doing on his behalf or with his name.
But the raids on the homes of his aides, and the seizure of his phones, all required U.S. attorneys to get sign-off from the Biden administration and then federal judges.
These prosecutors, who don’t like to lose in court and rarely do, know how tough the Supreme Court had made it to win a public corruption case against a public official — just ask Bill de Blasio or Chris Christie or Bob Menendez — and they aren’t casually asking for these warrants just to go fishing.
Of course, a raid isn’t a charge isn’t a conviction, but Adams — who has a 28% approval rating and 2025 challengers already circling — owes New Yorkers an accounting here.
This would be a good time for the jet-setting mayor to disclose who’s paid for his travels, instead of dismissing those questions with a sing-song about “my dime, my time, don’t whine.”
Fine, but it’s going to take more than rhymes to clear all this smoke.
Siegel (harry@thecity.nyc) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.
Harry Siegel: More smoke around Adams & he must clear the air
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03.03.2024
Days after the FBI raided the family home in Brooklyn of Brianna Suggs, the very young woman who’d been running Eric Adams’ formidable fundraising operation, the mayor finally addressed the matter and asked New Yorkers to withhold judgment while stressing that he always follows the rules and insists his staff do the same.
“Where there’s smoke there’s not always fire,” he said.
Four months later, the FBI on Thursday raided two houses in the Bronx owned by his City Hall director of Asian affairs, Winnie Greco.
“She was not a fundraiser, she was a volunteer,” Adams said after the raid of Greco, his longtime ally who my colleagues at The City and Documented NY reported helped host eight separate fundraisers for his 2021 mayoral campaign at the New World Mall in Flushing.
The mall — where several employees told reporters that $249 contributions in their names had been made at the behest of their bosses, paid back or outright falsified — was also raided by the feds on Thursday.
Greco was reportedly placed on an indefinite leave Thursday, after complaining about back pains during the raid. The City previously reported that as........
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