The Low Comedy of Eric Adams’s Indictment

Credit is due to indicted New York Mayor Eric Adams. His recent predecessors took multiple terms to become enmeshed in scandal. Adams was elected in November 2021; less than three years later, federal prosecutors have hit him with five felony counts.

In a document that was unsealed Thursday, the government accuses Adams of ripping off the city’s campaign-finance system in a not particularly ingenious fashion, and of cadging free luxury-hotel rooms overseas and airline upgrades from people who may have been agents of the Turkish government. This is a sad step down from the classical municipal scandal, entailing mayors conspiring or looking the other way as contracts are fixed or commissioners bribed or political parties corrupted in clever and devious ways. No such criminal arts are entailed here.

[Michael Powell: How it all went wrong for Eric Adams]

Instead, the pages of Adams’s indictment are full of low comedy.  In November, FBI agents waved aside the mayor’s security team, stepped with Adams into his SUV, and took away his cellphones and a laptop. But the mayor’s personal cellphone was missing. As this was the phone that Adams used to communicate with aides about his travel and fundraising, FBI agents demanded to see it.

The mayor produced the phone for the FBI the next day, but, according to the indictment, there was a problem: It was locked. Adams told the agents that he had recently changed its password and, alas, had forgotten the new code.

Years ago, a friend of mine reported on former Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Sharpe James, a powerful machine boss who was convicted of fraud. After the Adams indictment became public, my friend sniffed that the ham-handed derelictions attributed to the New York mayor made James look like Enrico Fermi, the nuclear physicist.

In November, federal prosecutors and investigators also sat down with an Adams staffer who acted as the mayor’s liaison to Turkish Airlines. The agents made clear that they knew the mayor and the aide—who is unnamed in the indictment but has been identified in news reports as Rana Abbasova—used an encrypted messaging app to communicate with Turkish officials about travel and fundraising. The aide, the indictment stated, excused herself to use the bathroom, where she deleted the messaging app.   

[Read: Don’t assume that Eric Adams is going anywhere]

The most damning accusations against Adams center on his supposedly taking money from foreign businesspeople, which is illegal, and using that money to obtain matching funds from the city’s campaign-finance system, which is also illegal. Far more amusing is what the government portrays as a nearly decade-long insistence on obtaining tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of free business-class upgrades on Turkish Airlines—most of which Adams failed to report. It comes off like a frequent-flier-club obsession run mad.

The indictment indicates that no matter where in the world Adams flew—Ghana, France, China, Oman—he instructed aides to route flights through Istanbul, the better to get perks from Turkish Airlines and luxury-hotel stays subsidized by Turkish interests. So in 2016, Adams and his girlfriend flew to India, purchasing economy tickets for $2,286. Turkish Airlines promptly upgraded them to business class, where two tickets would have cost about $15,000.

On one trip, Adams’s girlfriend texted him and was surprised to discover that he was in Istanbul, because their planned vacation was in France. According to the government, he texted back: “Transferring here. You know first stop is always instanbul.”

This pattern reached an apogee when Adams’s girlfriend asked him if the two of them could visit Easter Island, in the far reaches of the South Pacific. Adams was game, the government asserts, but only if they could fly on Turkish Airlines. Disappointment loomed. As the indictment noted, he asked her to check with the airline “to confirm they did not have routes between New York and Chile.”

Adams apparently was not oblivious to the risks he was running, and he seems to have resorted to a sleight of hand that in the reading sounds halfhearted. He took trips on Turkish Airlines in the summer of 2017, according to prosecutors, and three months later sent an email to his scheduler telling her that he had left the cash for those flights in an envelope in her desk. “He did not do that,” the indictment asserts.

Such inept subterfuge appeared to offend the crime-hunting sensibilities of U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. “That’s just a clumsy cover-up,” Williams—who has prosecuted corrupt financiers and the music mogul Sean Combs, not to mention the occasional mafioso—told reporters.

For all its absurdity, Adams’s alleged behavior, which prosecutors say began after he became Brooklyn borough president in 2014, was no small matter. The indictment noted that Adams’s Turkish contacts were working with the Turkish government, and all were intent on buying influence with an up-and-coming politician. He might, one of the Turks speculated, even become president.

As Adams neared the mayoralty, the Turks began to call in their chits, the indictment suggests. In September 2021, after Adams had won the Democratic mayoral primary, a Turkish official said it was Adams’s “turn” to repay Turkey. When an aide relayed the message, Adams replied: “I know.” A Turkish consulate was due to open in a new 36-story office tower in Manhattan, and city fire inspectors had found many problems and would not sign off. Embarrassment loomed for Turkish officials.

[Read: An era of shamelessness in American politics]

Adams, the indictment stated, put pressure on the fire department. The chief of the department in turn told his subordinates that their jobs were at stake; if they hoped to keep their positions in Adams’s upcoming administration, the office tower must open.

Not long after, prosecutors say, a Turkish Airlines manager sought a prime seat on one of Adams’s mayoral transition committees. He warned that if this did not happen, the mayor might find himself sleeping in economy class on his next trip. “Seat number 52 is empty,” the airline official noted. He was promptly appointed to a transition committee.

The ridiculous mixed with the pernicious. What’s remarkable was the lack of discretion among people in Adams’s circle, even as they realized that investigators were rummaging about. In June 2021, an aide—apparently Abbasova—was recorded talking with Adams’s contact at Turkish Airlines.

“How much does he owe?” the aide asked.

“It is very expensive,” the airline manager replied. “I am working on a discount.” A short time later, the airline manager said he would charge the mayor $50. That answer, apparently too low, annoyed the mayoral aide: “$50? What? Quote a proper price.”

“His every step is being watched right now,” the Adams aide warned the airline manager. The aide suggested “$1,000 or so,” adding, “Let it be somewhat real.” In the end, Adams paid $2,200 for two round-trip tickets to Istanbul—which, according to prosecutors, were upgraded to business-class tickets worth $15,000.

Long before the FBI took his phones, Adams was struggling to gain any traction as mayor. Recent months have been particularly unkind. FBI agents have raided the homes of his police commissioner and schools chancellor and a deputy mayor. Yesterday, his chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, returned from vacation in Japan to find two law-enforcement agencies waiting for her at the airport. New resignations come every week, and this mayor’s power seems more and more like an hourglass nearly run out of sand. For the Adams administration, “Let it be somewhat real” would make a fitting epitaph.