Former metropolis Social Providers Commissioner Gary Jenkins’ identify seems nowhere within the 27-page bribery indictment of Frank Carone, former high aide to Mayor Eric Adams. However Jenkins — solely recognized within the doc as Metropolis Official #1 — is rising as a central witness within the case.
Prosecutors allege Carone, a Democratic energy dealer then serving because the mayor’s chief of employees, “directed” Jenkins to steer a migrant shelter contract to the proprietor of a Lengthy Island Metropolis resort they are saying was secretly bribing Carone. Jenkins then overruled his employees’s objections to the resort and accepted an emergency contract that netted the resort proprietor greater than $6 million amid the migrant disaster.
On Wednesday, Carone’s attorneys made clear they’re going to assault that narrative, alleging for the primary time that prosecutors are sitting on proof demonstrating that Carone didn’t order Jenkins to favor the Lengthy Island Metropolis resort.
As he left the courthouse, Carone declined to explain his conversations with Jenkins, telling The Metropolis Reporter: “You recognize me fairly nicely. I’m a reasonably social individual. Would you like me to explain each communication I’ve ever had? Come on.”
That places Jenkins — who rose from poverty to one of many highest positions in metropolis authorities, solely to resign after ethics questions surfaced —- sq. within the center between the prosecution and the protection.
From Shelter to Metropolis Corridor
Within the indictment, prosecutors reference Metropolis Official #1 as being the Social Providers commissioner who later went to work for a lobbyist agency that Carone opened up after leaving Metropolis Corridor. Sources aware of the investigation verify Jenkins is Metropolis Official #1.
Jenkins grew up in poverty and climbed to the highest ranges of New York Metropolis authorities. For a time when he was a baby, he has stated, his household lived in a homeless shelter. He rose via the ranks through the mayoral administrations of Michael Bloomberg and Invoice de Blasio and was appointed Social Providers commissioner by Adams in January 2022.
That appointment put Jenkins at smack in the midst of the Adams’ administration’s wrestle to accommodate the waves of asylum seekers that started flooding town’s shelter system within the spring of 2022. DSS oversees the Division of Homeless Providers (DHS), which awarded dozens of migrant-related contracts because the disaster unfolded.
At one level, stories surfaced that Jenkins had misled the Authorized Assist Society and Metropolis Corridor about migrant households being pressured to remain in a single day in a Bronx consumption middle, opposite to metropolis coverage. He was later chastised by town Division of Investigation for a “lack of transparency” over the incident.
In the summertime and fall of 2022, Jenkins was additionally closely concerned in serving to the Adams administration discover locations to deal with migrants — together with a 75-unit resort in Lengthy Island Metropolis owned by Yan Po (Andy) Zhu known as the Microtel, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn alleged.
On the time, Jenkins’ employees had rejected Zhu’s resort as too small and for its location in a neighborhood already saturated with shelters.
Prosecutors allege Zhu aggressively courted Carone to reverse the rejection of his resort, and that, in flip, Carone “directed (Jenkins) to rethink the Microtel for an Emergency Shelter Contract.”
‘Sham Retainer’
To make their case, they offered a sequence of textual content messages depicting Zhu soliciting Carone’s assist to win his division’s approval and Carone’s subsequent interactions with Jenkins in regards to the Microtel.
Prosecutors allege that behind the scenes, Zhu entered into what they known as a “sham retainer” settlement with Carone’s brother, Anthony, an lawyer who additionally has labored for Carone’s lobbyist agency, Oaktree Options. The cash went into an account Anthony Carone managed that paid for Frank Carone’s bank card payments and different private bills, the indictment alleges.
Carone, they allege, finally obtained $120,000 in bribes this manner from the hotelier who known as him “my large man.”
On Sept. 22, 2022 there was a telephone name between Carone and Jenkins — the one direct contact between the 2 referenced within the indictment. This is able to make Jenkins a key witness to spell out what, if something, Carone stated about Zhu’s resort.
Prosecutors implied that the decision is expounded to the resort push as a result of one minute after it ended, Jenkins known as DHS’ then-first deputy commissioner, who on the time was Molly Park. Park then emailed her subordinates beneath the topic “Handle from Jenkins,” directing them to “have a look” on the Microtel.
In a subsequent textual content with Carone a couple of days later, Zhu continued to press Carone in regards to the resort, writing at one level, “Please assist me get finished we have to refinance.” The following day Carone’s brother, Anthony, entered the image, texting Zhu, “I wish to speak to you about LIC.”
Nightclub Assembly
Days later, Zhu met with Carone at an unnamed social membership, and some hours later Jenkins met with Carone on the similar membership, the indictment alleges. Prosecutors don’t reference something that was stated at that assembly — which might once more make Jenkins a possible witness to substantiate or deny that the resort got here up.
Prosecutors allege that all through October 2022, Jenkins continued to push employees to approve Zhu’s resort as a shelter, at one level advising subordinates to not transfer ahead with two different accommodations into account in the identical neighborhood as a result of the Microtel “was the precedence.” Days later, his division accepted a contract with Zhu’s resort that was finally price $6.8 million.
Lawyer: ‘No Corrupt Settlement’
On Wednesday throughout a court docket look earlier than U.S. District Choose Kiyo Matsumoto, considered one of Carone’s attorneys, Andrew Goldstein, stated he believes prosecutors are withholding proof that will present that Carone by no means “directed” Jenkins to “rethink” the rejection of Zhu’s Microtel as a migrant shelter.
Exterior court docket, Goldstein declined to explain this proof, however stated: “We now have purpose to consider that there’s exculpatory info in possession of the federal government…that contradicts the indictment that will make this a legal case in any respect.”
“The proof at trial,” he asserted, “goes to indicate there was no corrupt settlement, that there was no official motion that Frank Carone took on behalf of Mr. Andy Zhu and that actually Mr. Carone didn’t, in any means, betray his workplace.”
Jenkins, who resigned as DSS Commissioner in 2023 and went to work for Carone’s agency, Oaktree, didn’t reply to The Metropolis Reporter’s calls. He left Oaktree in August 2024 and is now CEO of City Pathways, a non-profit that combats homelessness.
