1 year ago
NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams does not appear to be a target of the widening public corruption probe focused on his 2021 campaign and the Turkish government, the mayor’s chief counsel said Tuesday.
The comment by Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg came at the mayor’s weekly press briefing, where officials declined to discuss several other aspects of the case, and on the same day new details about a grand jury subpoena came to light.
“There has been no indication that I’ve seen that the mayor is a target,” Zornberg said.
On Nov. 2, FBI agents raided the home of the mayor’s chief fundraiser, along with the offices of a Brooklyn construction firm and around 10 other locations, according to a report in CNN.
Investigators were reportedly searching for evidence of collusion between Adams’ campaign and the government of Turkey, and that the campaign accepted illegal donations from Turkish citizens.
Last week, the mayor revealed he had retained a private attorney at WilmerHale in connection with the probe. On Tuesday, he said a compliance attorney is looking into whether he could use campaign funds to cover some of his legal fees, which will otherwise come out of his pocket.
"We are fully cooperating with [the probe]," Adams said. "And my role is to allow them to do their job without interference, and I have to do my job of continuing to make sure the city navigates the various issues we are facing."
Investigators are specifically looking at an interaction in 2021 where Adams — who was the presumptive mayor but had not yet won his general election — reached out to former FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro about signing off on the opening of a Turkish consulate building in Midtown that fire inspectors had expressed concerns with.
CNN reported that Nigro was issued a grand jury subpoena — indicating that a grand jury has indeed been empaneled and that federal prosecutors are looking to build evidence for a potential indictment. It's unclear who will be the subject of any criminal case, though, should one materialize.
At his weekly press briefing, Adams said he was merely doing his job as an elected official by reaching out on behalf of the Turkish community in Brooklyn. And the CNN report found that a text message from Adams merely asked Nigro to look into the matter.
"This is what we do every day — [elected officials] reach out to an agency and ask them to look into a matter," Adams said. "You don't reach out to an agency to compel them to do anything, and I had no authority to do so because I was the borough president. We reached out because I had the largest Turkish population outside of Paterson, N.J. in this country."
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