Mayor Eric Adams Faces Crisis as U.S. Investigations Reach Inner Circle
By William K. Rashbaum, Dana Rubinstein, Jeffery C. Mays and Michael Rothfeld
NY Times
NEW YORK — Federal agents on Wednesday zeroed in on the highest ranks of Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, searching a home and seizing the phones of the New York City police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the schools chancellor and others, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The actions were unrelated to a separate corruption inquiry focused on the mayor and his campaign fundraising, some of the people said. But the revelation that not only the mayor but also many of the city’s most senior officials are embroiled in federal investigations further destabilizes an administration that is already reeling from other legal problems.
The investigations also raise questions about Adams’ ability to continue managing the nation’s largest city. And they threatened to further weaken his political standing as he faces a hotly contested Democratic primary next year in which he already was set to face several serious challengers.
Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.
In an interview on Fox 5 New York on Thursday evening, Adams denied that the various federal investigations were a distraction.
“Everyone has heard me from time to time: Stay focused, no distraction, and grind,” he said. “My job is to make sure I’m fighting on behalf of New Yorkers, and that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.
None has been accused of any crime.
In addition to the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, several other department officials, including Caban’s chief of staff and two Queens precinct commanders, also had their phones taken by federal agents, two of the people said.
Tarik Sheppard, the Police Department’s chief spokesperson, said he could not confirm that the agents had subpoenaed the commissioner’s phone, but he said: “We will cooperate with the U.S. attorney’s office, and any of these questions on what was done need to be referred to them because this is not a joint investigation.”
Lisa Zornberg, City Hall’s chief counsel, said in a statement that the investigators had not indicated that the mayor or his staff were “targets of any investigation.”
“As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has repeatedly made clear that all members of the team need to follow the law,” said Zornberg, referring to Adams’ career in the Police Department, from which he retired as a captain.
The seizures of the phones belonging to David Banks and Wright and Philip Banks were first reported by nonprofit news site The City.
The investigations were being conducted by prosecutors from the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is separately investigating the mayor and his campaign fundraising along with the FBI.
The full scope of the fundraising investigation into the mayor also remains unclear. But it has focused at least in part on whether Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to collect illegal foreign donations and whether Adams, in return, pressured the Fire Department to sign off on a new high-rise Turkish Consulate in Manhattan, despite safety concerns. It has also looked at free flight upgrades that Adams received from Turkish Airlines.
Representatives of the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI declined to comment.
Adams has consistently denied wrongdoing, and the federal authorities have not accused him of any crimes.
His first deputy mayor, Wright, whose phone was seized, is outranked by few people in City Hall. A trusted adviser, she led Adams’ transition team before taking a position at City Hall as deputy mayor for strategic initiatives.
Wright was promoted to first deputy mayor in December 2022 and is responsible for the day-to-day management of the largest municipal government in the country, which employs nearly 300,000 people. She often sits next to the mayor during his weekly press briefing.
Before joining Adams’ campaign, Wright, an attorney, was CEO of United Way of New York City and also served as president and CEO of Abyssinian Development Corp., which was the community development arm of Abyssinian Baptist Church.
In 2013, Wright and David Banks and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”
After taking office in 2022, Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, although Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Banks’ then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Banks’ acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.
After Adams appointed him, Banks tried to publicly assuage concerns about his past, apologizing in a Daily News column for associating with the two businessmen because “even the appearance of our friendship was damaging to my profession.”
Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer who represented Banks during the earlier investigation, confirmed that federal agents visited Banks’ home Wednesday but declined to comment further.
On Thursday, the first day of school, Chancellor David Banks, carrying a purple folder into his home, appeared bemused by the presence of reporters milling about.
As he punched in a code on a panel above the doorknob, he looked over his shoulder and asked, “What, was there a shooting or something?”
For his part, Terence Banks opened his consulting firm, the Pearl Alliance, after retiring from a position with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It was not clear whether the firm is a focus of the investigation that led to the search of his home on Wednesday — or whom the firm’s clients were. Banks does not appear to be a registered lobbyist with New York state.
The origins of the firm’s name are also unclear. But his brother Philip, the deputy mayor for public safety, and Pearson, the senior adviser to the mayor, both have had offices at 375 Pearl St. in lower Manhattan.
Pearson, the senior adviser and close friend of the mayor, has this year been named a defendant in four sexual harassment suits filed by former subordinates, three of them men who said they were appalled by his behavior toward women in the small unit that Pearson oversaw. Adams is separately facing an accusation of sexual assault dating to the 1990s.
The federal investigation into Adams spilled into public view in November, when federal agents searched the Brooklyn home of Adams’ then-chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, and walked out with several electronic devices and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.”
The same day, federal agents also searched the New Jersey homes of Rana Abbasova, an aide in Adams’ international affairs office and his former liaison to the Turkish community, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on the mayor’s transition team. Abbasova is cooperating with authorities.
Days after the raids on the homes of Suggs, Öcal and Abbasova, federal officials stopped Adams after an event at New York University, asked his security to step aside, joined him inside his vehicle and seized his electronic devices.
In July, prosecutors served federal grand jury subpoenas on Adams, the office of the mayor and his campaign.
Separately, in February, the Eastern District of New York searched two homes owned by Winnie Greco, the mayor’s director of Asian affairs.
On Thursday, political fallout from news of the search and phone seizures was swift, with several of Adams’ likely opponents in the Democratic primary pointing to the investigations as an unacceptable distraction.
“You can’t clean up this city’s problems when your own house is a mess,” said one of the opponents, Scott M. Stringer, a former city comptroller, on the social network X.
In November, after federal agents searched the home of Adams’ chief fundraiser, he brushed aside concerns about the ethics of his team.
“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,’” Adams said. “Almost to the point that I am annoying.”
