New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted by the federal government on Thursday on multiple counts of bribery and campaign finance law violations, according to an unsealed indictment filed in a New York court.
“Mayor Adams abused his position as this City’s highest elected official, and before that as Brooklyn Borough President, to take bribes and solicit illegal campaign contributions,” Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, charged in a press release.
Eric Adams denied the charges at a press conference in reaction to the news, and said he wouldn’t step down as mayor.
But according to the unsealed indictment, Adams and his staff were well aware that the charges were coming as they were under investigation by the FBI – and tried to cover it up by deleting text messages, hiding passwords to phones, and even increasing their passcode length.
On November 6, the indictment reads, FBI agents executed a search warrant on Adams’ electronic devices, including two cell phones. Neither of those phones were his personal device though, which is where he communicated with his staffers and an airline manager at Turkish Airline who allegedly gave him luxury travel in exchange for favors within the city government, including letting the Turkish government use a skyscraper despite over 60 fire code violations.
The day before the raid, when Adams learned that he was under investigation by the FBI, he supposedly changed his phone password from 4 digits to 6 digits.
Adams told the FBI that the reason he’d done this was actually to preserve evidence – he said that by changing the password, none of his staffers would be able to “inadvertently or intentionally” delete the contents of his phone.
But he also said that because he’d just changed the password, he couldn’t give the FBI access to his phone because he’d already forgotten what the new code was.
The changing passcode isn’t the only phone related issue in the case. According to the sealed indictment, one of Adams’ staffers who’d been involved in the alleged criminal conduct was interviewed voluntarily by the FBI ahead of the search warrant being executed against the Mayor. She (falsely) denied that the conduct had taken place, the document claims.
Then, at one point during the interview, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. There, she “deleted the encrypted messaging applications” she’d used to communicate with Adams, a Turkish official, an airline manager, as well as a promoter and others involved in the alleged conduct.
The staffer also advised Adams to delete his text messages back in March 2019 while they were planning a trip to Turkey.
“To be o[n the] safe side Please Delete all messages you send me,” the staffer wrote to Adams.
“Always do,” Adams responded.
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