CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig broke down the evidence prosecutors will point to on Thursday in their attempt to convict Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams in relation to the bribery and fraud allegations levied against him.
The Southern District of New York issued a 57-page federal indictment alleging that Adams “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits” from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official for nearly a decade. Prosecutors will have to prove “simply and specifically” how Adams violated the law by allegedly taking campaign contributions through straw donations in 2021 and returning the favor to foreign nationals, Honig said.
“The challenge that prosecutors will have here, and you just saw the U.S. Attorney grappling with this, is how to explain this simply and specifically and I think the SDNY’s [Southern District of New York] theory of what’s laid out in the indictment is like this: Eric Adams when he was mayor and before that, when he was Brooklyn Borough president, took 2 types of benefits from foreign nationals. First of all, he accepted campaign donations from those foreign nationals, which you’re not allowed to do, which were funneled through fake or strewed donors,” Honig said.
“Second of all, the indictment alleges that Eric Adams saw and received free business travel, discounted business travel worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, that’s the quid part of it,” Honig continued. “And then the quo, what he delivered in exchange for that is essentially [that] Turkish nationals wanted to get this skyscraper called the Turkish House, it had been built, it was a controversial issue in Turkey, it was extraordinarily expensive, they wanted to get it approved to open by the time a group of Turkish leaders, diplomats in the United States and so they asked Eric Adams to pressure the FDNY to approve of the building quicker than they would otherwise.”
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Adams has been charged with “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals,” along with one count of wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and one count of bribery.
A Turkish official who sent the straw donations to Adams’ campaign gave the mayor free or discounted travel on the Turkish airline to several international locations in exchange for Adams agreeing to have a Turkish diplomatic outpost established in the city, according to the indictment. Honig said Adams will likely say “he was just doing his job” and question the crime in asking that the New York City Fire Department act more quickly in constructing the skyscraper.
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“I think part of what you’ll hear from Eric Adams, and we heard part of this from him earlier, is that he was just doing his job. What’s wrong with a mayor or a borough official trying to get a FDNY to act more quickly. And I think the prosecution’s response to that will be ‘yeah, but you accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of contributions and personal benefits for that, which is what makes it a crime,” Honig continued.
Adams allegedly failed to disclose the travel benefits on his annual financial disclosures, according to the indictment.
The New York City mayor said he was not surprised by the indictment and promised to continue to “take care of the city.” He accused President Joe Biden’s administration of retaliating against him for criticizing its “broken immigration policies.”
“This did not surprise us that we reached this day,” Adams said. “And I ask New Yorkers to wait to hear our defense before making any judgments. In about 30 minutes we are going to hear a story about a case that’s in front of us. The story will come from the federal prosecutors, and I ask to wait and hear our side to this narrative.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.