New York City Mayor Eric Adams pleaded not guilty to five federal corruption charges in a historic court appearance Friday afternoon that made him the first sitting New York City to face criminal charges while still in office.
Wearing a dark suit and maroon tie, Adams was stoic during the 30-minute court proceeding, staring straight ahead at federal Magistrate Judge Katharine H. Parker as she summarized the bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy charges against the first term mayor. Though the courtroom was packed with reporters and attorneys, there were no apparent allies of the mayor in the crowd.
Parker explained to Adams his right to remain silent and to have an attorney represent him in court.
“Mayor Eric Adams, do you understand your rights as I’ve explained them to you,” she asked.
“Yes, I do your honor,” he replied.
Parker asked the mayor for his plea.
“I am not guilty, your honor,” Adams replied.
Adams was released after giving the court his signature, without having to surrender his passport. He had to promise not to discuss the charges or the case with staffers or family members — who are alluded to but unnamed in the indictment — and not to intimidate any other potential witness. Afterwards, federal court marshals escorted the stone-faced mayor from the courtroom.
He’s due back in court next week on Oct. 2 before federal District Judge Hon. Dale E. Ho.
After the proceeding, Adams stood beside his attorney Alex Spiro, who spoke to reporters gathered outside.
“We expect the charges to be dismissed,” Spiro said, adding he planned to file a motion to dismiss at Adams upcoming court hearing. “This case isn’t even a real case. This is the airline upgrade corruption case.”
The mayor has promised to fight the charges and not to resign, and repeatedly suggested he was targeted by the Biden administration for his ardent criticism of their handling of the migrant crisis.
“DOJ is handling this case independently,”Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of Adams’ claims at a press conference on Thursday. “I’m not going to go beyond that.”
Diallo Acey, 81, who traveled from Rockaway, Queens to see the mayor in court Friday, said he voted for Adams in 2021 but didn’t think he’d do so again.
Speaking outside of the courthouse, where he’d arrived too late to attend the hearing, Acay said he didn’t think it was “his place to call for the mayor’s resignation,” but thought Gov. Kathy Hochul should step in.
“She should by saying, look, ‘You got a very complex case. You’re fired,’” he said. ‘We should not treat Eric Adams with kid gloves because he’s the mayor.”
‘Disturbing Pattern of Events’
In a sprawling 57-page indictment unsealed a day earlier, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams laid out a decade-long scheme where Adams allegedly accepted flight upgrades, hotel room stays, luxury travel and meals estimated to cost around $123,000 from Turkish officials in exchange for public favors.
One of those alleged favors included Adams pressuring FDNY officials to expedite the building approvals for the 36-story Turkish consulate in Midtown so the Turkish president could be at its opening while visiting New York. Prosecutors also allege Adams solicited and accepted donations from foreign Turkish donors, funneled through illegal straw donations, that were given to buy his favor.
The indictment has caused uproar among hundreds of thousands of city employees, and political turmoil locally and on a national scale, ahead of a heated presidential election. Former President Donald Trump seemed to side with Adams in a recent appearance, saying “he talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city. I said you know what he’ll be indicted within a year…We have people that use the Justice Department and the FBI at levels that have never been seen before.”
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is first in line to take over if Adams were to leave office, triggering a subsequent special election. Hochul, who has the power to oust the mayor, said in a statement late Thursday evening that the indictment laid out a “disturbing pattern of events that has, understandably, contributed to a sense of unease among many New Yorkers.”
She added elected officials are held to a “higher standard,” though she did not call for the mayor’s resignation.
“It’s now up to Mayor Adams to show the City that he is able to lead in that manner,” she said.
The list of elected officials calling on Mayor Adams to resign grew Friday, when longtime Congressman Jerry Nadler joined the chorus, one of five New York members of Congress to do so, including two Republicans and two other left-leaning Democrats.
The mayor, Nadler said, “deserves the right to due process and to be treated as presumed innocent until proven guilty,” though he added, “My belief is that the Mayor has lost the ability to effectively lead the City of New York, and therefore, he must resign.”
The vast majority of local state and federal lawmakers who’ve called for Adams to step down are from the left wing of the Democratic Party and were already vocal Adams critics.
The Rev. Al Sharpton — a longtime ally of Adams who was not at a Thursday morning press conference in support of Adams attended by other influential Black leaders — planned to convene a meeting in the coming days to discuss the mayor’s indictment, a spokesperson confirmed. On Friday morning, he said in an appearance on MSNBC that Adams “should not be removed,” noting that other Democratic politicians, like Sen. Robert Menendez, remained in office while criminal cases against them for public corruption proceeded.
Months ago, Sharpton wrote a much-discussed opinion piece comparing criticisms of Adams to those lobbed against the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins — and highlighting Adams’s accomplishments in his nearly three years in office.
