NYC in crisis: Indicted mayor Eric Adams plays a Trump-style blame game

Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, ended at least 10 months of speculation on Thursday with a midday announcement that New York Mayor Eric Adams had been indicted for multiple crimes that allegedly extend back to 2016.

The court filings charge that Adams took multiple overseas trips, paid for by foreign nationals and never disclosed, that were valued at more than $100,000. Prosecutors also claimed that the mayor had made various efforts to cover his tracks. 

In one instance, according to Williams, Adams forced fire department officials to sign off on a newly-constructed 36-story building built by the Turkish government to house its New York consulate, although officials had reservations about the building’s safety. In exchange, prosecutors allege, Adams received campaign contributions and bribes that included luxury travel on Turkish Airlines.

In a Manhattan press conference, Williams told reporters that Adams had “abused his position as this city’s highest elected official, and before that as Brooklyn borough president, to take bribes and solicit illegal campaign contributions.” The mayor had “put the interests of his benefactors, including a foreign official, above those of his constituents,” Williams said.

Just before the indictments were announced, Adams held a press event surrounded by supportive members of the clergy, including the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, an eminent pastor in Brooklyn’s Black community.

The mayor vowed to resist increasing calls for his resignation and suggested, without being specific, that his prosecution might be politically motivated. “I think we should ask federal investigators and prosecutors if they were directed to take the actions that we are witnessing right now,” Adams said. He was interrupted by hecklers several times, including one who called him “a disgrace for all Black people in this city.”

On Wednesday evening, shortly before the New York Times and New York Post broke the story, Adams released a brief video message that struck a defiant tone and sought to link his impending corruption charges with his criticism of the Biden administration over immigration and border issues.

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams proclaimed. “If I am charged, I am innocent and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”

Intentionally or otherwise, Adams’ combative stance resembles a municipal version of Donald Trump‘s attack on the “deep state” and the Department of Justice, which the felony-convicted former president asserts has targeted him for political reasons.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott moved to weaponize the migrant crisis by transporting thousands of asylum-seekers to New York and other major cities — and to a great extent he succeeded. That cynical but effective play destabilized the political atmosphere in New York, which remains a Democratic-dominated city, as it limped out of the pandemic. It also reflected the existing systemic political corruption in New York City politics as well as the anemic state of our local democracy.

In a sense, Abbott’s strategy marked a continuation of the insurrection that boiled over on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. It’s as old as the Roman imperial strategy of divide and conquer. Those who are panicked at the increasing demographic diversity of America will resort to almost any means or methods to reassert rule by a conservative white minority.

Adams may well garner support from New Yorkers who are “informed” by Fox News and the Murdoch-owned New York Post that the migrants who have entered the U.S. legally are a clear and present danger to the financial well-being and safety of native-born New Yorkers.

On WBAI, the left-leaning New York radio station where I am interim general manager, we hear this a lot from callers in communities of color who are struggling to pay their rent. “Look at all the benefits these immigrants get, while tens of thousands of New Yorkers are living in shelters! These people undercut our wages,” they may claim. That analysis is economically dubious, but easily converges with more reasonable claims: “Why are we spending hundreds of billions on these wars that never end while we don’t have health care?”

“Morning Joe”-style MSNBC liberals and Beltway Democrats will very likely say that nativist voices in New York who back Adams’ divisive rhetoric have an ill-informed, “populist” point of view that avoids nuance. But it reflects the perspective of enough of the city’s electorate that Adams can still see daylight and appears determined not to quit. Liberal condescension born of ignorance of New York’s daily reality will be further fodder for the right wing.

It’s sad but true: Certain things in our nation’s greatest city never change. There’s scarcity and poverty, right up against a mind-blowing concentration of wealth. Foreign oligarchs own luxury penthouses they never visit, while the working homeless sleep wherever they can.

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Tens of thousands of New Yorkers died during the COVID pandemic, including thousands of selfless civil servants, health care workers and other “essential workers” who kept the city functioning in dark times. Emergency rooms in the city’s public hospitals were overwhelmed and the FDNY’s response time to medical emergencies sometimes exceeded 10 minutes. Welfare agencies were swamped with requests for emergency cash assistance and food stamp applications while the municipal civil service was hit with illness, death and a wave of early retirements.

On the federal level, the failure to renew the expanded child tax credit threw millions of children back into poverty, many of thousands of them in New York and other large cities where tens of thousands of migrant men, women and children had recently arrived without adequate clothing or shelter. Of course it was cruel, but as we say these days, that was the point.

Even if he can survive these indictments and avoid federal prison, Eric Adams faces a difficult election in 2025, with his public image in tatters and his popularity plunging. But as he well knows, democracy is in deep trouble in New York City, as well as nationwide: He won an election in 2021 in which just 21 percent of the electorate bothered to turn out.