When Mayor Adams named an unindicted co-conspirator of two guys convicted by the Manhattan U.S. attorney of bribing then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and top cops as his deputy mayor for public safety, he let old friend Phil Banks announce his own return seven years after he’d abruptly resigned as the NYPD’s chief of department while the FBI was looking into his finances.
When the self-described alcoholic and gambler who Adams appointed as commissioner of the notoriously corrupt Buildings Department resigned not long before he was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney for allegedly taking bribes in that job and throughout his previous one as a councilmember, Adams said he had no reason to regret his pick just six months earlier, since “those things that I’m not aware of, those proper review groups would make the determination, that’s not up to me to decide that.”
Asked about the campaign fundraisers Republican Eric Ulrich organized on Adams’ behalf with contributions from some of his alleged bribers, the mayor said it wasn’t fair to expect him to know all the people or faces at his events.
And asked about reporting in the Daily News that Ulrich told prosecutors Adams had warned him to “watch your back and watch your phones,” the mayor scoffed: “I was reading that article, and I felt like it was a reboot of ‘Goodfellas,’ ” he said. “Why would it make sense to appoint someone a commissioner if you know they’re under criminal investigation?”
When convicted con man turned “Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead got hit with new fraud charges last December (the U.S. attorney again) and was allegedly recorded boasting about all the money to be made through his bond with the mayor — though the indictment flatly states he couldn’t deliver on that — Adams said everyone was accountable, including his friend and “mentee.”
When a former cop the mayor has known for decades was one of six people charged in July (the Manhattan DA again, on another wiretap) with allegedly recruiting so-called straw donors to put money into his campaign, Adams said he wasn’t implicated and “it’s clear that we follow rules.”
And when the FBI raided the home of Adams’ chief fundraiser — neither has been accused of wrongdoing — on Thursday, revealing what the New York Times reports is an investigation (the U.S. attorney yet again) allegedly involving the Turkish government using straw donors to put money into his campaign, the mayor said “Where there’s smoke there’s not always fire.”
Talk about blowing smoke!
After the Messenger’s Ben Feuerherd reported that NYPD officers had visited the home of Adams’ 25-year-old chief fundraiser the day before the raid for a “wellness check,” the NYPD issued a statement that read like it was dictated from City Hall suggesting that the feds asking Internal Affairs to have cops drop by someone’s house to check on them before agents move in is a routine law-enforcement matter.
It’s not!
It was Banks, by the way, who before Adams was even inaugurated personally fired the head of Internal Affairs — who had investigated Banks back in the day, when he was rumored to be the commissioner-in-waiting .
It’s never wise, or fair, to prejudge an ongoing probe, and Adams says he’s “extremely comfortable about how I comply with rules and procedures” as “I hold myself to a high standard, I hold my campaign to a high standard and I hold my staffers at City Hall to a high standard.”
But as Adams likes to say, “if you don’t inspect what you expect, it’s all suspect,” and his self-assessment appears to be getting inspected now by prosecutors who just announced themselves with that raid of his young fundraiser’s home.
(Speaking of what’s uninspected, Adams doesn’t tell reporters about his travel costs, including on private flights and international jaunts, when the city isn’t covering them since “When I do my dime, I can do my time. I don’t want to hear anyone whine.”)
Prosecuting public officials keeps getting tougher as the Supreme Court defines corruption down, but that also means it’s hard to see U.S. Attorney Damian Williams going off half-cocked. Federal judges, for that matter, don’t sign raid warrants unless prosecutors can show a crime in progress or the potential of evidence tampering.
A lot of articles about the raid, like those about other probes of people in Adams’ orbit, note that “the mayor was not implicated.”
But “Implicate” means both “To intertwine; to wreathe, twist, or knit together” and “To involve (a person) in a charge, crime, etc.”
Re-read that first definition: Adams is implicated in an awful lot of this.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City and a columnist for the Daily News.
The smoke around Eric Adams is from somewhere
10
1
06.11.2023
When Mayor Adams named an unindicted co-conspirator of two guys convicted by the Manhattan U.S. attorney of bribing then-Mayor Bill de Blasio and top cops as his deputy mayor for public safety, he let old friend Phil Banks announce his own return seven years after he’d abruptly resigned as the NYPD’s chief of department while the FBI was looking into his finances.
When the self-described alcoholic and gambler who Adams appointed as commissioner of the notoriously corrupt Buildings Department resigned not long before he was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney for allegedly taking bribes in that job and throughout his previous one as a councilmember, Adams said he had no reason to regret his pick just six months earlier, since “those things that I’m not aware of, those proper review groups would make the determination, that’s not up to me to decide that.”
Asked about the campaign fundraisers Republican Eric Ulrich organized on Adams’ behalf with contributions from some of his alleged bribers, the mayor said it wasn’t fair to expect him to know all the people or faces at his events.
And asked about reporting in the Daily News that Ulrich told prosecutors Adams had warned him........
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