FBI raids at the homes of Mayor Eric Adams’ top aides this week represented a redux of sorts for one of the most controversial members of the mayor’s inner circle: Phil Banks.
Adams appointed Banks to the newly created post of deputy mayor for public safety in 2022. Banks resigned as the NYPD’s top uniformed officer just eight years prior. It soon emerged that he was an unindicted co-conspirator in a sprawling scandal that rocked the upper ranks of the NYPD.
John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a good government group, was among many who warned against Banks’ appointment.
“A guy with his track record – an unindicted co-conspirator in the biggest corruption scandal in New York City in the last couple of decades – being appointed to that position of trust and power, it was a big mistake by the mayor,” Kaehny said.
Banks was caught on wiretaps accepting bribes from two businessmen: Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg. Rechnitz and Reichberg were both convicted of bribing high-ranking police officers, including Banks. They’d filmed themselves smoking cigars in Banks’ office. At one point Rechnitz stored a bag of diamonds in Banks’ office, testimony revealed. Other evidence indicated Rechnitz had covered the cost of a trip Banks took to the Dominican Republic, which featured encounters with prostitutes. It emerged that the FBI had also investigated Banks for tax fraud.
Banks denied the allegations and was never charged. But the scandal was so far-reaching that then-Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said it was the darkest period the NYPD had faced since the 1970s.
“I gotta generate some kind of income, because they’re gonna hit me really hard,” Banks said in a recorded conversation with Reichberg amid the IRS investigation.
Despite all of this, Adams expressed faith in Banks and hired him as deputy mayor for public safety – a largely undefined role that granted him oversight of the NYPD.
“The extra layer when it came to the police department was very unusual, the leadership was always under the police commissioner,” said David Sarni, a former NYPD detective and current professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Banks’ role was widely seen as undermining then-Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who resigned after less than 18 months on the job.
Soon after assuming his new role, Banks fired the NYPD’s head of internal affairs, who had assisted the FBI when it had first investigated him.
The FBI is now eyeing Banks again, and its new investigation has also ensnared his brothers.
His older brother David Banks is the city’s schools chancellor and the domestic partner of First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, whose Harlem residence was also searched by the FBI on Wednesday, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.
In a brief statement Friday morning, David Banks said he was cooperating with a federal inquiry but could not comment further.
The New York Times reported that the FBI also searched the home of Terence Banks, who recently founded a government relations firm.
“The law is in my blood. My brothers and I grew up with it,” Phil Banks wrote in a New York Daily News op-ed when he was appointed deputy mayor. “I hope that from here on, I can serve the people of New York excellently to prove my commitment to them.”
Phil Banks did not return calls for comment.
Adams repeatedly dodged questions about the searches during an interview with FOX 5’s Natasha Verma.
“I have been clear that my message throughout my public life is to follow the law and that’s what we’re doing,” Adams said. “We’re gonna comply with whatever inquiry and whatever we have to submit while this review takes place.”
This story has been updated to reflect a statement from David Banks.