A Decade of Bribes: Prosecutors Accuse Eric Adams of Stunning Corruption

Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux

This is a developing story.

A federal grand jury has indicted Mayor Eric Adams on five counts of bribery, wire fraud and solicitation of illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors over a period of time beginning around 2015 and carrying through to this year. The 57-page federal indictment, unsealed in a Manhattan courtroom this morning, alleges that before and after he became mayor, Adams used his political position in a decade-long criminal conspiracy involving lavish gifts and secretive campaign contributions from representatives of Turkey in exchange for favors. including speeding up the opening of a new Turkish consulate in the city without a completed fire safety inspection.

Adams, in a defiant press conference minutes before U.S. Attorney Damian Williams detailed his office’s case, declared his innocence and vowed to fight the charges.

Beginning in 2014, shortly after his election as Brooklyn borough president, according to the indictment, Adams solicited and received luxury travel packages to several countries from “wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him,” a practice that continued when he decided to run for mayor and on through his 2021 mayoral campaign.

“As Adams’s prominence and power grew,” the indictment reads, “his foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him, particularly when, in 2021, it became clear that Adams would become New York City’s mayor.”

The arrangement allegedly continued into Adams’ first term and as he prepared to run for re-election and among other things it helped to secure his silence on a matter of importance to the Turkish government: the Armenian Genocide. In 2022, an Adams staffer assured an unnamed senior Turkish diplomatic official that the mayor would not make a statement of any kind on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the indictment alleges.
The same official lined up free or discounted luxury travel for Adams and his companions on Turkish Airlines, as well as “free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment while in Turkey,” the indictment says. The diplomatic official also facilitated the use of “straw donors” to Adams’ political campaign war chest designed to conceal the foreign origin of the contributions. Federal law forbids foreign nationals from giving to federal, state or local political races.

Photo: Eric Adams Indictment/Southern District of New York

The indictment alleges that Adams illegally parlayed his straw donations into matching public funds that are available to city candidates, totalling $10 million, which prosecutors allege amounted to fraud against the city and theft of public funds. Adams’s campaigns “applied for matching funds based on known straw donations, fraudulently obtaining as much as $2,000 in public funds for each illegal contribution,” the indictment says.