In a federal court hearing yesterday, it was revealed that Mayor Eric Adams may face additional charges separate from his federal corruption case. Federal prosecutor Hagan Scotten told the court that they have evidence Adams had attempted to intimidate a witness, claiming that the person received a “clear message from the defendant” to not be truthful to the FBI. Scotten characterized the allegations as a “significant instance of witness interference in this case,” adding that it is “likely” other defendants will be charged in the matter.
Speaking after the hearing, the mayor’s defense attorney, Alex Spiro, stated that the prosecutor’s claim “is the sort of nonsense that prosecutors say when they don’t have a real case. If they had a real case, they would have brought it.”
During the hearing, the prosecution also brought up issues that were keeping them from working with complete information. Scotten told the court that they were as of yet unable to access the mayor’s phone, after he changed the passcode just before authorities seized it and apparently forgot the new code. Scotten also said that the prosecution had not yet received complete responses from the mayor’s office regarding subpoenas issued over the summer, which requested information regarding the mayor’s contact with other foreign governments, including Israel, China, Uzbekistan, South Korea, and Qatar. Adams’ lawyer conceded that records and documents demanded by the subpoena had not yet been handed over.
Eric Adams is currently facing five charges in federal court, including bribery, wire fraud, and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national. He is the first sitting mayor in the modern era to be charged with a crime while in office. According to the indictment, Adams accepted multiple heavily discounted first class trips to Turkey over the years starting in 2015, when he established “corrupt relations” with a Turkish diplomatic official. He is also accused of having pressured New York fire department officials to approve the opening of a Turkish consular building when it was not up to code.
The indictment goes on to describe how foreign interests funneled money into his campaign through “straw donors,” concealing the true source of the funds, and how Adams’ mayoral campaign took advantage of New York City’s matching public funds program to attain an additional $10,000,000 from the city’s coffers for his campaign.
The next hearing in the mayor’s federal case is scheduled for November 1st. A trial date has not yet been set.
