Mayoral Madness
Terry H. Schwadron
Sept. 12, 2024
We’re hosting a tumult of political investigation in New York City — but no one quite knows what exactly is behind it.
For sure, Mayor Eric Adams is the focal point of multiple state and federal investigations that all seem to have overlapped in a series of raids in the last week on the homes of several of his closest advisers. Phones and electronic devices have been seized.
Little about the reasons has been formally explained, leading to reports from unnamed sources as the mayor and his team continue in office. None of the main players has been charged with a crime. Still, it seems extraordinary for most of the city’s top leaders, including two deputy mayors and the heads of the police and education departments, to be swept up in coordinated raids.
However confusing, this round of coordinated confiscations of phones and data reportedly are in connection to the way Adams does city business, relying on the appointments of close friends and allies. No one has outlined exactly what is legally problematic.
Still, Adams has faced a continuing series of investigations around money, campaign financing, nepotism — as well as popular unhappiness about the more usual set of urban problems that range from homelessness and the challenges posed by a large number of migrants being bused from Texas, from lower-level street crime and policing issues, and from a perception that the city is having a hard time figuring out its post-Covid personality.
The mayor was out this weekend visiting Black churches and comparing himself to the long-suffering Job in the Bible.
The Raids
Among those raided by agents were Sheena Wright, first deputy mayor; Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety; Schools Chancellor David Banks, who is brother to Philip and fiancé to Wright; Edward Caban, the police commissioner, and Timothy Pearson, a mayoral adviser and former high-ranking police official. City Hall is said to be pressuring Caban to resign.
Philip Banks previously had resigned as a NYPD police captain to be appointed to the deputy mayor spot (along with his girlfriend) after a federal bribery investigation in which agents said they found evidence that Banks had accepted thousands of dollars in free meals and sports tickets. The New York Times reported that the FBI also raided the home of a third Banks brother, Terence, who previously worked for the MTA and now runs a consulting operation.
It’s not even clear the raids were for the same reasons. NBC New York and The New York Post reported that the most recent raids were part of an investigation into whether James Caban, the police commissioner’s brother — who’s himself a former police officer — profited from his family connection by selling “consulting” services to nightclubs.
Last November, federal agents raided the Brooklyn home of Adams’ top campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs after the Adams campaign organization refused multiple times to disclose the identities of more than 500 supporters behind $300,000 in campaign contributions. Two others caught up in that round of investigation were Winnie Greco, the mayor’s Director of Asian Affairs, and a fundraiser, and has worked for and fundraised for Adams in a volunteer capacity for years. Rana Abbasova, director of protocol for the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs.
Then, agents seized two phones from Adams himself, returning them in days.
The New York Times reported, based on unidentified sources, that the FBI was looking into whether Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign “conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers.” The FBI apparently was examining whether Turkish interests, who were erecting a building in the city, were using a scheme to illegally inject money into Adams’ campaign.
A Rocky Mayoral Term
The Adams term has been rocky throughout, and there are several investigations going on at once. Adams, former cop and Brooklyn borough president, is a Democrat, though city issues are less easily parsed by party affiliation and more by alliances to get support from Albany and Washington. Mayors get judged by whether snow gets plowed and whether garbage trucks get to the trash before the rats.
In the last year, two administration officials have been prosecuted. Former NYPD inspector Dwayne Montgomery pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges involved with campaign funds, and a former buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich, was indicted last year by state officials for taking bribes.
In June, we learned that NYPD complaints under Adams have reached the highest level since 2012 with rising stop-and-frisk encounters as well as officers wearing morale patches on their vests that contain possible white supremacist imagery. Last March, Adams was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a woman in 1993 and demanding a sexual favor in exchange for his help advancing her career in the city’s transit police department. Adams has denied the accusations.
Adams’ administration has faced regular criticism on a variety of issues, including his blocking of a ban on solitary confinement last July after at least 26 people died in New York City jails since 2022.
Adams has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing and has repeatedly said that he instructs his team to “follow the law.”
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