A week after FBI agents searched the home of his top campaign fundraiser, the Feds moved on Mayor Eric Adams himself.
The New York Times reported Friday afternoon that the FBI confiscated several electronic devices belonging to Adams on Monday. The mayor was stopped on the street by agents with a search warrant. After they ordered his security detail to stand aside and stepped into the mayor’s SUV, the agents seized an iPad and at least two cell phones. The devices were later returned to Adams, according to the Times. On Wednesday, the mayor revealed that he had lawyered up in apparent response to the federal probe, retaining the law firm WilmerHale as legal counsel.
“The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing and continues to cooperate with the investigation,” attorney Boyd Johnson said in a statement.
It was just last Thursday when the FBI executed a search warrant at the Brooklyn home of Brianna Suggs, a 25-year-old fundraiser for Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign. Phones, computers, and files were taken from Suggs’s home during the search ordered by Manhattan federal prosecutors, who are investigating whether the campaign conspired with members of the Turkish government to direct illegal donations to the campaign through the use of straw donors. Investigators are looking into a Brooklyn-based construction company named KSK Construction, whose employees donated to Adams. The City reports city regulators previously flagged the donations as suspicious.
The federal probe has highlighted Adams’s unique connection to Turkey and the city’s Turkish community, a relationship that extends back to his days as Brooklyn borough president. In recent weeks, Adams even bragged about having visited the nation more than any other mayor in the city’s history. But questions have been raised about how far those ties go.
Adams, who abruptly canceled a trip to the White House on the day of the Suggs search, has said that he intends to cooperate with the inquiry and has maintained that he holds his campaign to the “highest ethical standards.” At a recent press availability, he joked about the frequency he tells his staff to be on their best behavior.
“I cannot tell you how much I start the day with telling my team, ‘We’ve got to follow the law, got to follow the law,’ almost to the point that I am annoying,” he said.
