Day: November 18, 2023

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount

By Joe Guzzardi

The FBI is ramping up its criminal investigation into New York Mayor Eric Adams’ winning 2021 campaign. The New York Times reported last week that federal investigators seized at least two of the mayor’s mobile phones and an iPad just days before the newspaper published its story.

The federal probe centers on whether Adams’ campaign colluded with the Turkish government to solicit donations laundered through a Brooklyn construction company. Earlier, the feds raided the home of a former Adams intern and the mayor’s chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. A search warrant that The Times obtained showed that the agents grabbed two laptops, three iPhones, a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams,” seven files titled “contribution card binders” and other potentially incriminating hard copy materials. To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must convince a judge that the electronic devices contain probable cause evidence of criminal offenses. In his statement, Adams said he would be “shocked” if any campaign team member had done anything wrong, adding that, for his part, he “had done nothing wrong.”

At issue is whether Adams, who had just won the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, pressured Fire Department officials to allow the new Turkish consulate across from the United Nations to open despite safety concerns. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the $300 million, 35-story-tall building a “masterpiece” and presided over its September 2021 grand opening.

Despite his staunch denials, and citing long-standing ties to Turkey, Adams must be uneasy. Although Adams is not charged with personal wrongdoing, the FBI is playing hardball, a tactic that’s ended poorly for the agency’s previous targets – Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, the 1,200 citizens charged in the January 6 protest and, most notably, President Donald Trump.

Insider speculation is rampant that the feds don’t care much if at all about Adams’ potential involvement in an illegal campaign financing scheme. Around Washington, election financing irregularity accusations are barely newsworthy. At the root of Adams’ problems are that he’s spoken publicly, loudly, critically and repeatedly about President Biden’s open border policy and how the arriving illegal aliens are bankrupting his once proud city. Even prominent Democratic supporters like Adams can’t get away with such candor. Adams may have sealed his fate when, in frustration, he said that without federal assistance the illegal alien debacle “will destroy New York City.” He warned that he saw no end to the unmanageable, unending wave of needy human arrivals.

Adams made his truthful but ill-advised warning about New York City’s potential destruction more than two months ago. Since then, conditions have grown significantly worse. The latest in New York’s constantly eroding fiscal situation, which pits spending on migrants against funding for legal resident programs, is Adams’ announcement that parents might have to volunteer to keep Big Apple schools nonviolent. Hundreds of trained safety agents were fired because migrant-related overhead, an estimated $12 billion and counting over the next three years, has crippled the city. Working 9-t0-5 parents howled about the task’s impossibility, and nonworking parents decried the injustice.

Boiled down to its bare bones, nothing will stop Biden from his lawless, unconstitutional, treasonous open border commitment. Tens of thousands of words have been written about how, to citizens’ detriment, cartels have trafficked humans and deadly drugs through the border.  Add to the sad list that, because Adams has to fund illegal aliens’ housing and food, the city can’t pay school security guards. Without experienced personnel, children will be at greater risk. Only months into the 2023-2024 academic year, three students have been slain so far, and at least 18 others have been stabbed or shot, victims of gang rivalries and ever-younger gun-toting kids who take advantage of the state’s forgiving judicial system.

Ironically, in April, Biden tweeted that “our children are our nation’s future” and that the “White House will always have their backs,” the president’s sad, dishonest cliché that he passes off as compassion.

Joe Guzzardi is a Project for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org.

NYC Mayor Adams’ Woes Mount