The Cascade of Inquiries on Mayor Adams Raises Doubts Wether He Can Govern

Mayor Eric Adams

 

By Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Dana Rubinstein

 The New York Times

As the news broke on Thursday that federal agents had seized the phones of five of Mayor Eric Adams’s top officials, City Hall officials hastily convened an emergency meeting.

The roughly 50 members of the administration who participated in the 3:45 p.m. call were told by the mayor’s chief of staff, Camille Joseph Varlack, that she understood that the developments would provoke anxiety. But she asked that they stay focused on serving New York City, according to two staff members who were on the call.

A few hours later, Mr. Adams addressed the F.B.I.’s seizures for the first time, resorting to what has become his go-to response in the face of mounting problems: He would “stay focused, no distraction and grind,” he said in a television interview on Fox 5.

But the remarkable avalanche of investigations and raids that struck at the heart of the mayor’s circle is no ordinary distraction, and it raised immediate questions about the mayor’s ability to manage the nation’s largest city amid an investigative onslaught now affecting much of his senior leadership. 

On Wednesday, federal agents seized the phones of the city’s police commissioner, first deputy mayor, schools chancellor, deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser, and searched at least one of their homes.

The nature of the investigations, by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other involves the police commissioner. The investigations are distinct from the same office's ongoing inquiry into the mayor and his campaign finances.

Separately, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York is pursuing an investigation that in February prompted federal agents to search two houses owned by the mayor’s director of Asian affairs.

Mr. Adams has not been accused of any crimes, and he has repeatedly said that as a retired police captain, he has a particular fealty to the law. But the investigations have cast a pall over City Hall and prompted a feeding frenzy for his critics.

They come at a time of already acute vulnerability for the mayor, once considered a rising Democratic star whose stature has precipitously fallen. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month, the mayor was barely a presence, without even a modest speaking role. 

A Quinnipiac University poll in December put his approval rating at 28 percent, the lowest for a New York City mayor since Quinnipiac began surveying the city in 1996. The Democratic primary for mayor next June is expected to be an unusually contested one, with several serious candidates already in the race, and others thinking of jumping in.

The investigations are sure to be a focus of the primary campaign, with some of Mr. Adams’s rivals getting an early start.

Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is running for mayor, cited the “unending stream of stories about the Adams administration being raided and investigated by federal law enforcement,” and said that it was “clear that New Yorkers are not getting the steady leadership we deserve.”

Zohran Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens who is considering entering the race, said the city was facing a cost of living crisis and deserved better: “An administration plagued by corruption and distracted by scandal cannot effectively deal with it.”

Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, and his allies contend that he is being held to a different standard because of his background, and he has accused unnamed forces of conspiring to deny him a second term — frequently comparing himself to the city’s first Black mayor, David N. Dinkins, who lost his re-election bid to Rudolph W. Giuliani. 

But Mr. Dinkins never faced the simultaneous federal inquiries that have descended on Mr. Adams and his circle.

Signs that the investigations have distracted the mayor and his team are not hard to find. In November, when Mr. Adams learned that his chief fund-raisers home had been raided, he immediately canceled a series of meetings in Washington, D.C., with federal officials about migrants — an issue he had cast as existential to New York City — and rushed home to comfort his staff, he said.

Following Thursday’s news, the police commissioner, Edward A. Caban, failed to appear at a planned event with the American Cancer Society. The schools chancellor, David C. Banks, who should have been celebrating the first day of school, canceled a television interview with WPIX-TV.

Edward Caban (Mayor's buddy) stands at a lectern.

Edward A. Caban, New York City’s police commissioner, is among the top officials whose phones were seized by federal agents. Credit...David Dee Delgado for The New York Times

The turmoil comes amid substantive and vexing challenges for the city: an affordability crisis that is pushing families out of the city, an influx of migrants from the southern border that is straining the city’s shelter system, persistent fears over crime, concerns about the commercial real estate market, traffic congestion and cleanliness. 

Maya Wiley, who ran for mayor against Mr. Adams in 2021 and who served as counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio when he was facing his own federal inquiry, said that the investigations would undoubtedly affect the work of high-ranking officials, but that day-to-day operations like garbage collection would go on.

“It’s incredibly stressful and distracting for people at the top levels of government that need to make big decisions and move policy,” she said.

Five city officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said they were stunned by the expanding investigations, and two of them said they were worried about how the inquiries might affect their work.

Even so, some wheels of government kept turning as planned.

Mr. Adams sought to keep a routine schedule on Wednesday, even after the F.B.I. conducted its raids, which had not yet been made public.

When a city subcontractor mistakenly drilled a hole through the casing of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, causing river water to pour in and prompting the tunnel’s closure, Mr. Adams visited the site and spoke to the news media. On Thursday, he appeared at Public School 257 in Brooklyn with Mr. Banks, the schools chancellor, smiling and giving students high fives on their first day of school. 

Shortly after the news broke on Thursday, Mr. Adams was scheduled to attend a 2 p.m. roundtable discussion at City Hall about electric bike safety. Robert Holden, a City Council member from Queens, said he had been trying to get the meeting for six months, and after he saw the news about the raids, he worried that the mayor would cancel.

But Mr. Adams came and listened to victims who had been injured in crashes and members of Transportation Alternatives, a street safety group. Mr. Adams was joined by Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a top adviser, and Jenifer Rajkumar, a state lawmaker from Queens and near-constant fixture at Mr. Adams’s side.

“He was patient — he listened,” Mr. Holden said. “He didn’t say much. He wanted to hear both sides.”

But try as he might to focus, Mr. Adams is unlikely to escape the issue — and his critics are unlikely to let it drop. Jumaane Williams, the public advocate, said that the investigations “affect New Yorkers’ confidence in government” and called on the mayor to “provide clear and immediate explanations to the public to help restore trust.”

When Mr. Adams was asked on Fox 5 on Thursday how he could convince New Yorkers that he was not distracted, he said he had just opened schools for nearly one million students, an effort he cast as no small feat.

“Remember, this was taking place for a 10-month period,” he said, referring to just one of the federal investigations, the one concerning his campaign finances. “And we continue to see everything from record jobs to decrease in crime.”