Like the NYPD patrolman he once was, Mayor Eric Adams has been doing his best to keep a possible crime scene under control — move along, folks, nothing to see here — but the dark cloud of scandal hanging over City Hall is proving to be bigger and thicker than Hizzoner can blow away with breezy slogans and a sunny grin.
On Wednesday, in coordinated early morning raids, FBI agents seized phones and/or searched the homes of more than half a dozen senior city officials, including Sheena Wright, first deputy mayor; David Banks, schools chancellor, and his brother Philip Banks III, deputy mayor for public safety; Edward Caban, NYPD commissioner; and Timothy Pearson, mayoral adviser.
And just like that, the leadership of New York’s government was thrown into a state of confusion, its mayor dealt what could prove to be a politically fatal blow.
“Everyone has heard me from time to time: Stay focused, no distraction, and grind,” Hizzoner later told a pack of reporters, repeating a slogan he often recites to children.
Good luck with that. When 15 FBI agents show up at your house at 5 a.m., as witnesses say happened at the Hollis home of Phil Banks, it’s safe to assume that the day’s focus will shift from managing the city’s bureaucracy to saving one’s own skin. Ben Brafman, Banks’s high-profile lawyer, confirmed that he did indeed get a call from Banks.
As the city’s small but ravenous pack of political reporters dutifully swings into action — led by The City, which first broke the news of the raids — Team Adams has tried in vain to make the story go away, using hand-waving and bluster. “Investigators have not indicated to us the mayor or his staff are targets of any investigation,” said the mayor’s counsel, Lisa Zornberg, in an official-sounding but legally meaningless statement. As Zornberg knows, the FBI is not in the habit of giving formal notice about the purpose of its search warrants to defendants, witnesses, or anybody else; that is why it shows up at your door at five in the morning.
Over at 1 Police Plaza, top members of the NYPD are wilting under the heat, according to a jaw-dropping story in the New York Post. “When the Post tried to reach chief of patrol John Chell for comment about the raids and subpoenas,” the paper reports, “NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Tarik Sheppard got on the phone and called the reporter a ‘f- - - ing scumbag.’” Minutes later, the department reportedly kicked Tina Moore, the Post’s police bureau chief, out of the press room at NYPD headquarters.
How did we get here? Adams, a micromanager, appointed nearly every one of the people under scrutiny, even in the face of what outsiders considered big red warning flags. Phil Banks, who suddenly resigned as the NYPD’s chief of department a decade ago, was an unindicted participant in a corruption scandal a decade ago in which two businessmen, Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, bribed multiple officials and ended up going to prison. Adams appointed him anyway.
Pearson took a job in the administration while also initially remaining on the payroll of Resorts World Casino, where he was in charge of security; the shady double-dipping arrangement ended after the New York Times published a report about it. Pearson, appointed to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, was later at the center of a mêlée at a migrant shelter that involved 100 officers, drones, and a physical scuffle with security staff; the NYC Department of Investigation is looking into the incident. Pearson has also been hit with four lawsuits accusing him of sexual harassment. Adams has not altered his duties.
Commissioner Caban came under a cloud when it turned out his brother, Richard, was operating a Bronx bar and restaurant called Con Sofrito — a place where Adams celebrated his birthday and NYPD brass liked to party — in violation of multiple building and fire-safety codes and a judge’s order to shut down an outdoor terrace. Richard Caban reportedly is among those hit with subpoenas this week.
There are more scandals brewing, from the prosecution of Adams’s former building commissioner Eric Ulrich on bribery charges to the multiple convictions of people who illegally raised funds for the mayor’s 2021 campaign.
Where is all of this heading? “For starters, Mayor Adams needs to tell police commissioner Edward Caban to resign,” says the New York Post editorial board, which endorsed Adams in 2021. “Even if he’s cleared, bad blood will fester on. The only losers in this scenario are the NYPD and the people of New York City. Indeed, Adams likely needs to jettison every aide who now threatens to sink his mayoralty.”
It’s unlikely that Adams will heed the advice; this is a mayor who seems utterly incapable of ever acknowledging any degree of fault. After last week’s debacle at the West Indian Day parade, where five people were shot in broad daylight — one fatally — before the gunman got away, Adams repeatedly called the day a success. “When you look at that one person who we’re going to find that shot five people, you remove that from the equation, you got hundreds of thousands of people that were out this weekend and really heard the call of a peaceful J’ouvert and a peaceful West Indian Day parade,” Adams said at his weekly press conference. “So really, hats off to the teams.” I spoke with several residents of the neighborhood who, like me, found City Hall’s blind indifference to its own failures to be outrageous (we talked about it on my podcast, You Decide).
Worse still, according to the Post editorial, Adams “faces persistent (and often convincing) criticism that he’s a poor executive who too often values loyalty over competence. That weakness for familiarity comes at the expense of effective and clinical governance.”
Whether or not he acknowledges it, Adams now leads an administration that is in a state of crisis and falling apart. The mayor, as he often does, insists that he regularly reminds his appointees to “follow the law.” It never seems to occur to Hizzoner that it might be better to hire aides who don’t need a daily reminder not to commit crimes.
This post has been updated.
