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“U.S. prosecutors on Thursday charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams with accepting illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him… Adams, 64, denied wrongdoing and said he would fight the charges in court. He said he would not step down. ‘I will continue to do my job as mayor,’ he said at a news conference.” Reuters
The left calls on Adams to resign.
“At core, Adams allegedly violated a very clear and very basic law: he knowingly took campaign contributions from foreign nationals. American politicians are not allowed to take money from foreign actors, for the obvious reason that such contributions could make politicians beholden to foreign influence. Adams took money from Turkish nationals like he was running for mayor of Istanbul, not New York City…
“Much of the evidence presented in the indictment comes from Adams’s own text messages, or those of his staff. It would appear Adams and his co-conspirators fell for the false gospel of ‘deletion,’ thinking that deleting text messages actually makes them go away. At one point, Adams and a staffer had this exchange: ‘[T]he Adams Staffer texted Adams, ‘To be o[n the]safe side Please Delete all messages you send me.’ Adams responded, ‘Always do.’’…
“An Adams staffer voluntarily spoke to the FBI, but during the meeting, she went to the bathroom and ‘deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate with Adams,’ per the indictment. This is not merely evidence of incompetence, it’s evidence of a guilty conscience. Adams, and his staff, knew what they were doing was wrong.”
Elie Mystal, The Nation
“Elections have consequences, and one consequence of Adams’ three years of governance is that there is, at the moment, astonishingly little New York City government to speak of. The police commissioner resigned in September amid an investigation related to nightclubs. The feds just raided the offices of his interim replacement…
“Two former fire chiefs were just indicted. The schools chief announced his forthcoming resignation less than a month into the school year, after the FBI seized his phones. The sheriff is being investigated. The city’s chief counsel recently resigned. The health commissioner stepped down… The people hyping Eric Adams as the future were always selling a bill of goods. We just didn’t realize it was so literal.”
Tim Murphy, Mother Jones
“Adams was once heralded as a new face of the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, an answer to the leftward tilt that some commentators thought was damaging the party’s brand with swing voters. As an ex-cop, Adams channeled a deluge of funding to his former colleagues at the New York Police Department in the name of fighting crime — but it turns out he was allegedly lining his own pockets without any sign of cognitive dissonance…
“[These allegations are] particularly galling when Adams has centered his political brand around the need to provide ‘justice and safety’ to beleaguered Gothamites. Once in office, he made crime the focal point of his administration, falsely declaring a few months into the job in 2022 that he had ‘never witnessed crime at this level’ in the city. (Major crimes were nowhere near the peak seen in the 1990s, neither nationally nor in New York City.)…
“It is in the public’s best interest that he be removed as far away from power as soon as possible.”
Hayes Brown, MSNBC
The right argues that Adams should be afforded a chance to defend himself.
The right argues that Adams should be afforded a chance to defend himself.
“There may be less here than meets the eye in some of these charges… For example, many of the gifts from Turkish sources were realized in the form of upgrades on flights to business class or expensive hotel suites. It is not clear what Adams knew of the logistics for such travel or their inclusion in annual reports. Despite their public personas, many populist politicians tend to be a pampered class who expect to be feted in the best quarters as they speak as the ‘voice of the people.’…
“That was captured most vividly by NYC Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sashayed at the Met Gala in a designer dress reading ‘tax the rich.’ It was a scene with a crushing irony. The dress itself was worth more than some people make in a year and it was just ‘loaned’ to AOC despite being made specifically for her. She also did not pay for her ticket, which would cost $35,000…
“Failing to publicly list how you moved from economy to business class on flights is hardly the stuff of ‘All the King’s Men.’”
Jonathan Turley, New York Post
“To sustain a bribery charge against a politician, prosecutors must link specific gifts to ‘a formal exercise of government power’—a daunting task. Consider the fact that multiple donors to former mayor Bill de Blasio’s campaigns went to prison for bribery, yet de Blasio himself avoided prosecution. It’s just not that easy to convict an elected official for taking bribes…
“It’s also plausible that federal indictments no longer have the same moral weight among the public that they once did. The multiple prosecutions of Donald Trump have been widely perceived as politically motivated, even by people who don’t like him. In fact, the pile-on of indictments against the former president seems to have helped him, giving credence to his claims of being an enemy of undemocratic forces. This is clearly the tack that Mayor Adams plans to take.”
Seth Barron, City Journal
“Ask yourself: Why did the Turkish government find it worthwhile to have the mayor in its pocket? Why did the Egyptian government find it worthwhile to have Senator Bob Menendez in its pocket? Why did the Chinese government find it worthwhile to have Linda Sun, former aide to New York governors Kathy Hochul and Andrew Cuomo, secretly on its payroll?…
“Why did the Russian government find it worthwhile to launder money and send massive payments to right-wing social-media influencers?… Why did an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the government of Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico City allegedly pay approximately $600,000 in bribes to Texas Democratic representative Henry Cuellar and his wife?…
“If you want fewer opportunities for foreign corruption, reduce the size, power, and personnel in government. A big, sprawling government, whether it’s federal, state, or local, with Byzantine regulations and lots of staffers who can do favors or ensure paperwork gets approved, creates lots of motive, means, and opportunity for bribery and illicit favors.”
Jim Geraghty, National Review
