Mayor Adams pleaded not guilty at Manhattan federal court on Friday to sweeping corruption charges alleging he traded his influence for luxury trips around the world, illegal campaign contributions from overseas donors, and other gifts for nearly a decade.
Wearing a crisp navy suit and a maroon tie, the mayor entered his plea while sitting stone-faced and with his hands clasped on his lap in a packed 26th-floor courtroom before Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker.
“I am not guilty, your honor,” Adams said.
Judge Parker released Adams on a bond package his lawyers agreed to before the hearing that bars him from contacting witnesses in the case, most of whom the feds have not publicly identified.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen said prosecutors would apprise Adams’s lawyer of the people he is prohibited from communicating about the alleged conduct.
“This does not preclude Mayor Adams from having routine communications concerning business and private family matters,” Judge Parker said.
Adams is due back in court next Wednesday, when his defense attorney, Alex Spiro, said he would file a motion to dismiss the case. The judge warned Adams that a warrant would be issued for his arrest if he violated the terms of his release or missed his court dates.
Adams faces up to 45 years in prison if convicted on all five counts in the indictment, including conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and bribery.
The charges stem from one of the ongoing investigations by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams’s office that is scrutinizing, among other things, Adams’s ties to the Turkish government.
Prosecutors say the mayor has been abusing his political influence since he was Brooklyn borough president by accepting more than $100,000 in perks from at least one Turkish government official and wealthy businessmen, like luxury trips to countries including Turkey, China, France, Hungary, Ghana and India that were not disclosed.
The feds say Adams’s benefactors further bought his influence by secretly funneling thousands of dollars into his campaign war chest via U.S.-based straw donors, netting public matching funds that contributed to the total $10 million raised by his 2021 mayoral campaign. It’s illegal for foreign nationals to donate to U.S. political candidates.
“This case isn’t even a real case. This is the airline upgrade corruption case,” Spiro said at a press conference outside the courthouse after the hearing, which lasted less than 30 minutes.
The mayor’s lawyer said the illegal donations were made unbeknownst to him and claimed the feds’ case was based on a cooperating witness’s lies, which sources told The News was a reference to the mayor’s former Turkish community liaison Rana Abbasova, who’s cooperating with investigators.
“That staffer has lied, and the government is in possession of that lie,” Spiro said.
“When that staffer was first interviewed, that staffer said that Mayor Adams knew nothing about this, he was not involved in this, and that he is innocent. They have that information. They have not turned that over to us. They have not turned that over to you.”
In the indictment against Adams, Abbasova is described as trying to destroy incriminating evidence when the FBI first approached her by excusing herself to a bathroom and deleting encrypted messaging applications she used to communicate with the mayor.
She agreed to cooperate with investigators after a raid on her New Jersey home, the Daily News previously reported.
Abbasova’s attorney declined to comment on Spiro’s claims Friday.
Mayor Adams, who has rebuffed growing calls to resign, gave a thumbs up to reporters on his way in and out of the courthouse.
The first New York City mayor in the modern era to face criminal charges while in office, Adams’s administration has been reeling under the magnifying glass of federal investigators and a series of high-profile resignations by top advisers in recent weeks.
Just hours after he appeared in court, The News reported that state and federal investigators approached Adams’s top adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, at Kennedy Airport as she returned from a vacation to Japan.
The Manhattan district attorney’s investigators seized her phone at the airport and informed her of a search at her Brooklyn home. The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which is handling the case against Adams, served her with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury and hand over documents.
The indictment against Adams alleges he solicited and accepted illegal donations from Turkish nationals, and once he became mayor, his “foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him.”
He repaid the favors by, among other actions, pressuring the FDNY to fast-track the opening of a new 36-floor Turkish Consulate in Manhattan despite serious fire safety concerns, according to the feds.
In comments outside Gracie Mansion Thursday, Spiro challenged several of the prosecution’s key points and produced text messages to bolster his position.
“You can almost picture them trying to cobble this together and try to tell a story so that they could say, ‘Corruption, corruption, corruption,’” Spiro told reporters as he stood with Adams at his side. “They do that to tarnish him in your eyes.”
Spiro said there was nothing untoward about the flight upgrades as they were commonplace when seats were available. He disputed the notion that the mayor had sought foreign donations, saying he had given his staff explicit instructions not to do so. Spiro also said, echoing comments Adams has previously made, that there was nothing suspicious about the mayor’s outreach to the FDNY regarding the consulate.
Gov. Hochul, who has the power to remove Adams from office, called the indictment “the latest in a disturbing pattern of events” but did not call for him to step down.
“My focus is on protecting the people of New York and ensuring stability in the city,” she said in a statement late Thursday. “While I review my options and obligations as the governor of New York, I expect the mayor to take the next few days to review the situation and find an appropriate path forward to ensure the people of New York City are being well-served by their leaders.”
