Fighting corruption charges, Eric Adams may have a friend in SCOTUS

Just how bad of a position has a federal criminal indictment and the specter of additional charges and defendants put Mayor Eric Adams in? It depends on how you look at it.

Several experts convened by the think tank Vital City and the Columbia Journalism School weighed in at a virtual panel hosted by NY1’s Errol Louis on Tuesday morning.

Legally speaking, Adams and his defense team may be able to take some comfort in recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court overturning corruption convictions. “The Supreme Court has been particularly hostile to corruption cases,” said former Southern District of New York prosecutor and now defense attorney Carrie Cohen. “The Supreme Court basically has signaled to prosecutors that, under our federal criminal laws, things that we think are unethical, things that we may dislike in our public officials, are not necessarily federal crimes.” Adams’ defense attorney Alex Spiro has lambasted the Southern District’s case against the mayor, unsurprisingly taking particular aim at the bribery charge in the five-count indictment. The kind of scheme that prosecutors allege Adams and his associates engaged in with Turkish officials and nationals – favors given in exchange for official action “as opportunities arise” – is not one that has been tested before the Supreme Court, Cohen noted. “It’s not the type of proximity in time that you see the Supreme Court signaling to prosecutors they want to see to be able to establish a bribe scheme under our federal criminal laws,” she said. 

Adams’ fate in office, however, is not entirely a legal matter. Other panelists who participated in the discussion suggested that the web of investigations circling City Hall and Adams’ inner circle have caused more political trouble for the incumbent mayor than seen in recent decades. 

“Eric Adams may well have a good case, as his lawyer says, to make in court against the specifics of these charges, but New York City has to ask whether or not this is the kind of leadership that it can afford at this point,” said Tom Robbins, the investigative journalist in residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.

Asked about his experience working in an administration under pressure during a corruption scandal, Stanley Brezenoff, former first deputy mayor to Ed Koch, contended that the current troubles facing Adams and City Hall are unprecedented – including when factoring in the 1980s Parking Violation Bureau scandal under Koch. “Just so many key aspects of the city, including the mayoralty, of course, but a number of critical agencies that require a strong leadership just to operate on an ordinary basis,” Brezenoff said. “The fact that you’re in an atmosphere where you don’t know what the next day is going to hold for you – distraction doesn’t begin to describe what it’s like.” That – and Brezenoff’s assertion that Adams will have trouble filling positions at high levels – contradict Adams’ claims that he won’t be distracted from keeping city government running.

Political consultant Basil Smikle, who ran primary rival Ray McGuire’s campaign in 2021, suggested that keeping the city operating and implementing more long term policies are two different challenges – the latter of which will be more concerning now. “The snow will get plowed and the garbage will be picked up,” Smikle said. “But more long term efforts to reform policing, for example, will come into question when we have multiple police commissioners.”