Federal authorities have raided the home of a pastor allied with Mayor Eric Adams who had formed a political action committee to support him during his 2021 campaign. According to sources familiar with the matter who spoke with the New York Times, the FBI raided the home of Alfred Cockfield II in Far Rockaway two weeks ago as part of an investigation from the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office into Adams-supporting PAC. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney, Breon Peace, declined to comment on what prompted the raid or what was taken from Cockfield’s home.
In 1998, Cockfield pleaded guilty to transporting cocaine and $55,000 in drug proceeds from North Carolina to New York City, and served a reduced sentence. Since then, he has spent a good part of his working life promoting charter schools for the underserved, having begun his career working alongside his parents at Battalion Academy, which he would eventually run, and expanded his reach in education by forming alliances with other schools through BLACC – the Black, Latinx, Asian Charter Collaborative. He is also the Chief Operating Officer of God’s Battalion of Prayer Ministries, and serves on the board of the Long Island Power authority.
Cockfield founded the PAC, Striving for a Better New York, to support then-candidate Adams’ agenda in September 2021. He was with the mayor on election night, and was part of his transition team. Given that Adams’ victory was considered all but assured after the primary, the plan was to use the money to fund state-level candidates supportive of the mayor-in-waiting’s policies.
In 2022, a Times investigation revealed that much of the $1.3 million raised by the PAC went directly to Cockfield, his associates, and related entities. Cockfield paid himself $126,000 as chairman, another $143,000 went to colleagues of his and Mayor Adams, and $60,000 went to Lamad Academy, a charter school founded by Cockfield. After a letter from the State Board of Elections, the donation was returned. Putting aside these and other expenditures, the Times found that only about a quarter of the funds spent by the PAC – some $168,000 – went to candidates running for office in 2022, a crucial period for midterm elections. In a move that surprised even Mayor Adams, Striving for a Better New York crossed party lines by donating $10,000 to Republican Lee Zeldin’s gubernatorial campaign. “I thought it would’ve been better to support Democrats up and down the line, and, particularly, this governor,” the mayor said of the donation at the time.
The embattled Eric Adams, who is set to face trial on federal corruption charges next year, is also connected to Cockfield outside of his PAC. Weihong Hu, a businesswoman whose hotel was also raided last week by the feds, reportedly enlisted Cockfield to help get the Department of Buildings to allow construction to proceed in her Manhattan developments, despite deviating from work plans and an affordable housing agreement with the city.
At the time of this writing, neither Eric Adams nor his lawyer, Alex Spiro, have answered any questions about the raid or Cockfield’s connections to the mayor.
