This story was published in partnership with The Guardian.
Federal and city law enforcers executed a search warrant earlier this month at the Queens home of a pastor who led a political action committee for Mayor Eric Adams — on the same day authorities raided a hotel owned by a developer and Adams fundraiser the pastor had worked for, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The probe out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York is eyeing the pastor, the Rev. Al Cockfield II, and his dealings with the developer, Weihong Hu, the source said.
The raids by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and city Department of Investigation follow an in-depth reporting project by THE CITY, Guardian US and Documented earlier this year on Hu, her fundraising for Adams and Cockfield’s work on her behalf.
The joint news project revealed Hu had deployed Cockfield to press the city Department of Buildings to greenlight construction work the agency had halted at two of her Manhattan development sites, after one project was cited for violating safety regulations and another demolished and failed to replace required affordable housing.
The city Department of Buildings commissioner has since made an extraordinary apology to the local community board, acknowledging his agency had been wrong to allow the affordable housing to vanish, according to one board member.
Eastern District U.S. Attorney Breon Peace is also looking at the political action committee Cockfield launched just ahead of the general election in 2021, Striving for a Better New York, according to The New York Times.
Campaign finance records show the PAC paid Cockfield $144,000 in wages and consulting fees — transfers that state Board of Elections officials raised questions about. And the PAC gave $60,000 to a charter school Cockfield operates, which the school later returned after inquiries from the state’s Division of Election Law Enforcement.
Working with Peace’s office, investigators earlier this year also obtained warrants to search the homes of Adams’ Asian community liaison, Winnie Greco, who THE CITY reported stayed for months in Hu’s Fresh Meadows, Queens, hotel while its rooms were being paid for by the government to house people released from city jails. Adams’ son, Jordan Coleman, also spent a night there — a matter Adams said the Department of Investigation put under “review” following the news account.
Hu hosted two fundraisers for Adams’s mayoral campaign at that hotel in 2021, THE CITY, The Guardian and Documented reported. Her fundraising for Adams continued into his reelection campaign: Several donors to Adams’ re-election campaign previously said Hu’s family reimbursed them for contributions they made in connection to a fundraiser Hu hosted at her Hudson Yards apartment building in June 2023.
Cockfield didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. The search of his home was first reported by the New York Post, and the probe’s connection to Hu was first reported by The Times.
Ben Brafman, an attorney for Hu, said, “The only thing I can tell you is that she is not a target of the investigation,” adding that she is not cooperating with authorities.
Adams has defended his relationship with Cockfield, whose daughter Amaris serves as a mayoral spokesperson.
Asked by THE CITY in June to respond to the joint news investigation on Hu and Cockfield, Adams said at the time, “There’s no reason to investigate. If someone, a pastor or clergy leader calls and say[s], within the laws, to do the right thing, to assist someone, they have the authorization to do that. We’re going to follow the rules.”
A Helping Hand
Cockfield played a role in attempts to garner two ultimately favorable decisions by the Department of Buildings on Hu development projects in 2022, THE CITY, Documented and Guardian US previously reported.
One of those decisions lifted a stop work order at a hotel construction site on West 39th Street within hours of it being imposed — despite there being “an immediately hazardous condition” involving an elevator.
Cockfield had called two top Department of Buildings officials and urged them to lift the order, according to a source familiar with department practices. Three city construction experts previously told THE CITY that this suggested Hu’s project got special treatment, with one of them saying, “It’s like skipping in line.”
A second decision the Department of Buildings made that Cockfield sought to play a role in reversed a stop work order on a hotel development on West 35th Street, imposed in March 2021 after Hu demolished housing she had been obligated to preserve.
Hu had purchased two century-old tenements in 2016, with the intention of converting them to a 25-story hotel. Under the administration of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the DOB, Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the local community board worked together to make sure that Hu followed Garment District zoning rules that required her to maintain more than a dozen affordable apartments at the development site.
But in early 2021, as Adams’ campaign for mayor heated up, a community member notified the board in early March that the facades of the two buildings had been demolished.
After being notified about the demolition by Community Board 4’s housing chair, Joe Restuccia, the buildings department implemented a stop work order on the project on March 4, 2021.
The stop work order stayed in place through the early months of the Adams administration. Then Hu started to have strategy sessions with the project’s architect and others — including Cockfield, according to one attendee — about how to get the stop work order lifted.
In the summer of 2022, Hu’s architect submitted a new plan to the Department of Buildings that called for a fully commercial hotel without any affordable units. Without any notification to the community board, the buildings department approved the permit and lifted the work stoppage in November 2022.
Now city agencies are stepping in to reverse the damage, working with Community Board 4 to ensure affordable housing is ultimately part of Hu’s hotel project.
After THE CITY, the Guardian and Documented published the joint investigation on Hu earlier this year, the Department of Buildings and Department of Housing Preservation and Development asked for a meeting with Community Board 4 regarding the hotel on West 35th Street, according to Restuccia.
He described that meeting with DOB Commissioner Jimmy Oddo — who took over the agency last year — “remarkable.”
“In that meeting, the commissioner of the Department of Buildings apologized and said things were done incorrectly here,” Restuccia said at a recent board committee meeting.
Buildings officials had previously attributed the stop work order reversal at West 35th Street to a “miscommunication” between the agency and HPD.
Andrew Rudansky, a Department of Buildings spokesperson, referred questions about his agency’s decisions on Hu’s projects to the mayor’s press office.
“We don’t comment on any open investigations related or unrelated to us,” said Kayla Mamelak, a press secretary for Adams, in an email.
Following an audit this summer, the Department of Buildings issued a full stop work order at Hu’s development site, and required the developer to submit new plans that abided by the regulations — including the affordable housing.
Earlier this month, attorneys for Hu presented a new plan to Community Board 4’s housing committee that would permanently preserve 14 units of affordable housing containing more than 10,000 square feet of space in the bottom five floors of the hotel. In exchange, Hu would get a 40-year tax exemption that’s common in these kinds of preservation deals, according to community board members.
Additional reporting by Katie Honan.
