Eric Adams: the New York City mayor charged with corruption

New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the city hall rotunda in New York City

(Image credit: CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images)

When New York City mayor Eric Adams was 15, he was arrested and beaten by a police officer – a traumatic event that inspired him to join the force, where he rose to become a captain before deciding to enter politics. It was “a powerful anecdote” that resonated with New Yorkers during Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign, says The Economist.

Nearly four years on, “Hizzhoner” is mired in “dishonour” as the first-ever sitting New York mayor to be charged with a federal crime. Adams denies charges of “wire fraud, bribery and receiving illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals”, and has vowed to remain in his post. But amidst “a rising chorus” of calls to resign from fellow Democrats, his tenure at City Hall looks precarious.

What is Eric Adams accused of?

Adams has been accused of accepting a decade’s worth of business-class flights and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish businessmen, and at least one government official, without disclosing them – and then allegedly paying back the favours by “pressuring” New York’s fire chief to waive “a building inspection problem” for the local Turkish consulate. The indictment also claims he routed foreign donations through US citizens so the gifts would appear legal and tried to conceal the wrongdoing in a “clumsy cover-up”.

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Long before these charges, Adams had already become “a national laughing stock”, says The Washington Post. Indeed, “if there were any justice in the world he would have been indicted long ago – for criminal levels of incompetence”. Adams stuffed the municipal government with “patronage hires” and clearly “preferred the prestige and glitz of the office to the actual work of formulating policy”, says The Guardian. Controversy and “corruption clouds” followed his rise to political office.

Born in Brooklyn, the fourth of six children, in 1960, Adams’ father was a butcher who struggled with alcoholism, and his mother worked double shifts as a cleaner. When he was eight, the family moved to Queens, where Adams later joined the 7-Crowns gang and became known as “a tough little guy” who ran errands for local hustlers, says The New Yorker. After a stint in a juvenile penitentiary, he appeared to have turned his life around. He began attending college while working as a mechanic and mailroom clerk at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and, in the early 1980s, won a place at the New York City Police Academy.

What happens next?

It’s been “difficult to distinguish between the unusual and the unethical” in Adams’ career, says The New Yorker. He explained away a property ownership discrepancy by claiming his “homeless” accountant was going through “difficult times”. When his own address came under scrutiny in his run for mayor, he tried to scotch reports he lived in New Jersey by showing reporters around a Brooklyn apartment, raising more questions than it answered. Why did a vegan have salmon in his fridge?

Adams is not the first New York mayor to have “dubious” friends, but several of his have been prosecuted for financial crimes. The latest is Lamor Whitehead, a Brooklyn preacher found guilty of defrauding a parishioner of $90,000, trying to extort $5,000 from a businessman and later seeking a $500,000 loan on the promise of favourable actions from the mayor.

More troubling, says MSNBC, are Adams’ dealings with the police. Critics accuse him of showering the force with cash, with no obvious improvement in crime, and trying to scupper “a police transparency bill” by nobbling a council member. But whatever the outcome of his own indictment, says The Washington Post, perhaps the real scandal is that, “in a city of 8.3 million people, this clown was somehow the best we had to offer”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.