Title: Reporters Ask the Mayor: Adams Charges Dismissed, Mayoral Campaign Heats Up

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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Welcome back, everybody. Now it's time for our weekly Reporters Ask the Mayor segment with WNYC and Gothamist reporter Elizabeth Kim. Every week, Liz heads down to City Hall to attend Mayor Eric Adams's press conference, the only time that Adams takes questions on any topic from reporters during the week. First, we're obviously starting with this breaking news. The mayor has had his federal corruption charges dismissed with prejudice.

We'll look at the political future of Eric Adams now that this case has gone away. Also this week, the mayor had his deputies and commissioners with him to talk about their priorities in Albany as the budget process continues upstate. More on this later. Also, the mayoral race is heating up. At this week's press conference, Eric Adams had sharp words for former Governor Andrew Cuomo but shied away from discussing his own campaign to keep his seat in City Hall.

The progressives in the race also got big news over the weekend. As the Working Families Party announced their endorsements, many wonder how those to the left of Cuomo will band together to defeat the former governor despite their own ideological differences. Elizabeth Kim has been on the ground trailing the progressives. She joins us now with her reporting about that and about the mayor. Hey there, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Hey, Matt.

Matt Katz: It's nice to hear your voice.

Elizabeth Kim: Same.

Matt Katz: Let's start with this breaking news. Mayor Adams had his federal corruption charges dismissed with prejudice. This is a huge weight lifted off the mayor's back. Have we heard yet from the mayor on this this morning?

Elizabeth Kim: You're absolutely right, Matt. This is a huge weight that is lifted off the mayor's shoulders. I reached out to his office to get a statement. They have not responded yet, but I would imagine that for a moment like this, he does want to either come before the press, or I could see him releasing a video in which he talks about the charges being dropped with prejudice, meaning that they cannot be brought back again by federal prosecutors.

Matt Katz: There's no circumstances that they could be reintroduced.

Elizabeth Kim: There's a big if. The big if is whether Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, might elect to take up these charges. There was a lot of talk at the end of last year about how much of this case and the evidence were federal prosecutors sharing with Alvin Bragg's office. Now, as you know, it's not uncommon. It's a common practice for prosecutors, state and federal, to be sharing information and to be collaborating.

That is one possibility that's out there, although, because of the election, you wouldn't think that he would do something like that before November? The question in my mind is, would he elect to take up these charges after the election, especially if Adams doesn't win? Because then if he is no longer a public official, if he's no longer in the public eye, is there really a reason to pursue these charges? How would that land with the public? There is the specter of that out there.

Again, Bragg has not indicated in any way that he is investigating the mayor or is interested in pursuing an investigation against the mayor.

Matt Katz: Even after the mayor leaves office, he would no longer have power, but he could be pursued by prosecutors for actions he allegedly took while in office. That's interesting. [crosstalk]

Elizabeth Kim: It's an interesting wrinkle, and it's one I think that a lot of people will be speculating about in the months to come, but like I said, it would be highly unusual for him to try to do it during an election year because it would be perceived as being a political prosecution.

Matt Katz: Adams is obviously going to interpret this as, and say that the original charges were politically motivated, which he's already argued, and now that they've been removed, it proves that. Will Adams effectively communicate that, or does the stain of the Trump administration's interference in the case affect how the public and voters will view what's transpired here?

Elizabeth Kim: This is interesting because I think the mayor will certainly come out and say that he has been vindicated, but he hasn't been exonerated. There is a real difference there. It isn't as if the mayor went to trial, that prosecutors laid out their evidence, and then a judge looked at everything and said, "Mayor, as you have said, you're not guilty." That's a different story. What's happened here is something completely different.

It was that the charges were dropped, and they were dropped at the request of the Justice Department. In its original memo, the Justice Department didn't say whether or not these charges were valid. In fact, they left open this loophole for an incoming federal prosecutor at the Southern District that Trump has appointed to reassess the case after the election. The Justice Department's rationale was, "We don't want to pursue these charges against the mayor because it will prevent him from helping us with our immigration crackdown." That, in essence, became the mayor's problem.

There was a problem before with the charges, but in many ways, that became his bigger political albatross was this idea that somehow he was needed, his help was needed for the Trump administration, and that the Trump administration was handing him this deal. Now, a judge has stepped in and said not only will the charges be dropped, but they cannot be brought back. This should relieve him of a sense that he is beholden to the Trump administration, but at the same time, by several accounts, there was a lot of courting of Trump between Adams and his lawyers to get to this deal.

Is he really free of Trump? Does he really come away with this feeling as if he doesn't owe the president anything? I don't know.

Matt Katz: We have a caller who wants to hit on this point. Alan in Brooklyn. Good morning, Alan. Thanks for calling into The Brian Lehrer Show.

Alan: Good morning and thank you again. This is something that unless you're following it carefully week to week, even lawyers reading the news can lose track of what's happening. The government tried to keep strings on the mayor after the dismissal. This judge prevented them from keeping those strings on but did not allow the government to then make the dismissal conditional on the strings remaining.

He's skated through scot free because the conflicting motives of the judge to do the right thing and avoid any kind of abuse of power and the government's failed attempt to put controls on the mayor's behavior for a year, but it in no way reflects that he's actually gotten an exoneration on the merits. Many people in the city will probably read it that way.

Matt Katz: You're saying people in the city will read it as if he has not been exonerated. It was just some unusual--

Alan: No, I think many people in the city, in his constituency at least, will read it as a flat-out exoneration and forget that the only reason the government brought the request to dismiss was they wanted to keep strings on him for a year, and the judge would not allow that. Now he has gotten a dismissal that does not reflect the merits at all, and many people will think it does reflect the merits.

Matt Katz: Those who have not followed all the permutations of this. We have a text similar--

Elizabeth Kim: That's certainly the way that the mayor is going to spin it. I think the caller makes a really good point, is this has been very complicated and it's been drawn out, but I do think that ultimately, the stain of this that the mayor is facing has become less about whether or not the charges were justified, and how serious was it that he's being accused of accepting travel upgrades from Turkish officials in exchange for fast tracking the opening of the Turkish consulate and that he accepted illegal foreign donations?

I think the conversation has moved away from that because it has been quite a while since those charges were brought out, but the attention earlier this year had completely pivoted to what did he promise Donald Trump in order to get the Justice Department to ask federal prosecutors to dismiss the charges? Because this was a largely unprecedented move by the Justice Department to intervene in a case like this that was about to go to trial. It was set to go to trial this month, in fact.

Matt Katz: Listeners, now that the mayor's charges have been dismissed and this trial will not happen this month, do you believe his story that they were always politically motivated? Has it changed your opinion of the mayor? Are you willing to vote for him again in June? Who is your top pick for the Democratic primary so far? How does that factor into this whole situation that has unfolded this morning? Who are you ranking on your ballot?

If you consider yourself a progressive, do you have a strategy for gaming ranked-choice voting? We'll also take your questions for WNYC and Gothamist reporter Elizabeth Kim. Call or text us, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We got a text that really, again hits on this point. "This court decree in no way vindicates the mayor, though that's how he'll see it. His guilt or innocence has not been adjudicated. It seems to solidify all the more that a quid pro quo arrangement with Trump was made."

However, Liz, it does mean that there's no power that the government has over him in terms of executing immigration policy in the federal government's favor. In one sense, for those who are opposed to the Trump administration's immigration policies, people might be breathing a bit of a sigh of relief that the mayor is no longer under pressure to have the NYPD be completely complicit with ICE.

Elizabeth Kim: That is true, Matt. I think the problem that the mayor now finds himself in is that, at the very beginning of the Trump administration, the mayor came out and said that he would not openly criticize Trump. He also instructed his commissioners and his top aides to do exactly that, to not publicly criticize the Trump administration. Now, the mayor at the time argued that this was just smart politics, that if he had a problem with any of Trump's policies, he would bring it to the president himself privately.

Now, many people noted that this was not what he did when President Biden was in power because as we all remember, the mayor quite vocally criticized Biden for his border policy. For the mayor to now come out and maybe be more outspoken about some of these policies, that would be interesting, but it would very much contradict what he originally said was a decision he made not because of his case but because he said it was just smart politics for New Yorkers.

Matt Katz: We had a question from a listener asking you to just go over the charges against the mayor again. I think that's a good point. We haven't mentioned them this morning. Just go over the charges that are now, poof, gone away against the mayor, just so listeners can remember.

Elizabeth Kim: I think the most eye-grabbing charge, which is the one that the Southern District led with when they presented the case, when they presented the indictment last year, was that they accused the mayor of accepting flight upgrades and also other kinds of travel perks like a nicer hotel suite from Turkish officials, and in exchange, the quid pro quo here was that he helped the government of Turkey fast track the opening of a Turkish consulate in time for their president, President Erdoğan, to come for a visit.

This was something that they're accusing that the mayor did. Another charge that they brought that was also quite serious was that the mayor had accepted tens of thousands of dollars in illegal foreign donations. That is a federal crime. That was something else that they had laid out. Then there were other charges related to that that involved wire fraud and conspiracy. Another thing that they had suggested was that they were planning bring more charges against the mayor, but that never came about.

We will never quite know what exactly they were intending to bring. I think there was evidence that they could have brought a charge that somehow he was obstructing or interfering with them obtaining new evidence against him. Another question that people were wondering was that they had seized the mayor's phones and what was on these phones. The last time prosecutors updated the judge, they were still trying to break into the mayor's phone. It's not even clear whether or not they did in fact ever have access to those text messages.

Matt Katz: What about the other mayoral associates, the other Adams associates who have criminal cases? A listener asked if those cases are still ongoing and if this affects that at all.

Elizabeth Kim: There is a case that's brought by the Manhattan District Attorney against His former chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin. That case is still pending. That case involves an accusation that she accepted gifts from people involved in real estate, a hotel developer, in exchange for helping that hotel developer fast track some building approvals with the DOB. That case is still very much in the early stages.

There's also another case that's pending that was also brought by Alvin Bragg against the former Buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich. That case also involves accusations of graft, and that has been out there for a while. I was looking at that case just the other day, and I think it will be two years in September since they first brought that indictment.

Matt Katz: I've been curious, and I want to go to a couple callers who have some thoughts on the campaign, but--

Elizabeth Kim: Oh, I should say, though, Matt, that those cases, as far as we know, do not involve the mayor. The district attorney has come out and said that he is not investigating the mayor as part of those cases.

Matt Katz: That's moving on a separate process-

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly.

Matt Katz: -in some sense, is disconnected from this. Okay, Liz. We're going to take some callers regarding the campaign specifically, but the mayor, oddly, has been avoiding talk about his campaign. It's unclear how much of a campaign operation he's got going on. Tell me about what's going on there.

Elizabeth Kim: Petitions are due, and these are petitions that all candidates have to collect. They need to collect a certain number of signatures, depending on the office, to get on the ballot. They're due this Thursday at midnight. The mayor was asked this week whether he planned to file those petitions, and he gave a cryptic answer, which is, "When we're ready, we'll make an announcement." That's really an odd answer. It's not in the affirmative.

He has previously said that he fully intends to run as a Democrat, but if, in fact, he doesn't have the signatures and he doesn't file the petitions, that would mean that he would not be running in the Democratic primary, leaving open the question, will he run as an independent in the general.

Matt Katz: That could make a very interesting general election. It also is fascinating that we got this announcement this morning about the dismissal of the case just hours before he needs to file these petitions. Let's go to our phone lines. Harold in Queens. Hi, Harold. What's your thought on the election?

Harold: How are you?

Matt Katz: Well, thank you. How are you?

Harold: Good. Beautiful day. Got some sunshine. That helps us all get through these times. I'm a big supporter of Jessica Ramos. I'll tell you why. I'm from California, and in California, Latinos became a strong force, and that led to progressive majorities. We think of the short game, which is money talk. If you're looking at the campaign, Eric Adams probably can get a lot because he's a Trumper. Cuomo can get a lot because of his history, but I think the future of New York is immigrants.

Ramos, she was born here, but she's from immigrant background. She's Latina. She rides the subway. She's got young kids. That's the future we need in New York. Putting it in a question, too, I'd be interested in your thoughts on thinking the long game because MAGA thinks the long game and progressives need to think the long game. The fact that we have old white men like Cuomo and Adams with very sketchy sexual histories and we have a candidate who's a woman who's married with young kids, who rides the subway, what's your thoughts on the long game of looking at demographics, which MAGA is looking at because they want Latinos out so they get white people to vote for them?

That's why I'm voting for Ramos, absolutely, because I see this demographics game.

Matt Katz: Thank you, Harold. Appreciate it. Liz, I'm going to get your take, but I'm going to take one more caller first. John, in Brooklyn, you have a different pick for mayor. Tell me about that.

John: Just a one-line comment on your previous caller. Older white people aren't allowed to run for mayor now because of what your previous caller just said. My take is that I'm a landlord and he's the only mayor in recent history, I'm not saying ever, but in recent history, that gave landlords an increase. de Blasio gave us a rent freeze, our taxes went up, housing courts closed during the pandemic. de Bellagio basically told landlords, "Go pound sand."

Maybe there's some listeners like the previous caller who like that, but I'm an everyday New Yorker. I'm an immigrant myself. I wasn't born here. I like the fact that he gave us increases. I also think that the charges-- We never had a trial, so we don't know definitively, but just my opinion, I think they were Trumped up. No pun intended. This is New York. He's a businessman. Somebody upgrades your tickets to business. Big deal.

If they gave him free tickets, that would be another story, but a hotel upgrade? How much tax money did we waste investigating the man? You know what I'm saying? It just seems like overdone. It seems like they were just out to get him.

Matt Katz: Thank you very much, John. Appreciate it. Liz, Harold in Queens run for Ramos. John in Brooklyn thinks the charges are Trumped up, so to speak, and what's the big deal? Turkish Airlines get the first class.

Elizabeth Kim: Those were two really fascinating viewpoints. I like what John says, because I do wonder, and this is something that the mayor is doing. He's basically at his press conferences and at any public events, town halls that he goes to now, is he's telling voters to, "Look at my policies, and have they helped you?" John is clearly someone in the camp that has come away feeling like the mayor has helped him, and he is right. Mayor de Blasio did impose a rent freeze, and he had two terms.

There was eight years of relatively-- Either the stabilized apartments' rents were frozen, or there was a very slight increase. Here comes in Mayor Adams, and he doesn't do that, and he gets criticized a lot for that by renters and people who complain that the cost of living in New York has gotten too high, but there is a camp of people who've come away feeling like the mayor's policies have helped him. I was recently in Brooklyn covering Zohran Mamdani. He is the Queens State assemblyman who is running for mayor and really gaining a lot of momentum on the left.

I interviewed an Uber driver who told me that he votes in every mayoral election. He is a registered Democrat, and he told me that he is grateful to Mayor Adams for intervening when the Uber and the other app companies tried to shut down the app. The city, in fact, intervened and made sure that the apps were reopened so that the drivers can continue to make a living. I think that at the end of the day, the policies will matter.

It's just a question of how much do they matter and do they affect a broad enough swath of New Yorkers that the mayor can kind of get some momentum. Now, don't get me wrong, if you look at the polling, and this is not just election polling, but if you just look at his approval ratings, they're really in the tank. They are at historic lows for a mayor. Can he overcome that in the next couple of months? That's a big question.

To Harold's point about Jessica Ramos, I have thought a lot about her candidacy and her problem. She was one of the candidates that did not make it onto the Working Families Party's slate this weekend. They announced a slate of four candidates that they were going to endorse. She had sought the endorsement, but she did not make it. The reason she didn't make it is because she has been unable to raise any money. In fact, her campaign is in the red.

As the caller Harold said, he makes a very important point, is she does represent these constituents that are immigrants and immigrant workers, and she does have this long legislative track record as a state senator of building protections for this community, but at the same time, if you just think about it, this is also not a community that has a lot of money to drive and finance a campaign for someone like her. I think it's a real difficult issue because, on the one hand, you would like to see a candidate like her out there because she can drive the conversation about where immigrants stand at a moment in time where they're extremely vulnerable.

Matt Katz: We have a caller who's bringing up one other wrinkle here, and that's ranked-choice voting. Ryan in Brooklyn, tell us your thoughts on the election and your approach.

Ryan: Hi, thanks for taking my call.

Matt Katz: Sure thing.

Ryan: Can you hear me?

Matt Katz: I can. Yes.

Ryan: I wanted to bring up the DREAM for NYC strategy. This is a ranked-choice voting strategy for progressives who don't want to see another Adams or Cuomo mayor term. DREAM stands for Don't Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor. This does address the wrinkle of ranked-choice voting, as you said. I'm personally voting for Zohran Mamdani, who, as the guest said, is running to make New York City more affordable.

I want to say that it doesn't matter which alternative Democratic candidate you prefer, whether Jessica Ramos, Brad Lander, et cetera. The bottom line is the only way to guarantee with ranked-choice voting that your vote does not go to Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo is to leave them off the ballot entirely. Folks can read more about this at dreamfornyc.com, but just wanted to throw that out there. Don't Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor.

Matt Katz: Thanks for your call. Liz, the Eric and Andrew elements to this race are particularly interesting. We have a few clips of Adams talking about Cuomo and actually attacking Cuomo. Can you set this up for us and why it was a different tone that the mayor took than we had heard from him previously?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. I thought this was quite a remarkable moment in the mayor's press conference yesterday. I went back to listen to it, and I saw that it was around two minutes long. The mayor basically almost set up this question himself. A reporter had asked him about a comment that Andrew Cuomo had made. Andrew Cuomo said that he feels that the city doesn't need the state to change its rules on the standard for involuntary commitment.

He's talking about that because that has been one of the issues that is shaping the race, which is, how would these candidates handle people living on the streets who have mental illness? Cuomo has promised that he would be able to remove people who have mental illness from places like the subways. The mayor has tried to do the very same thing, but he says that he's running up against a state law which has a standard for when you can do something like that.

Cuomo said, "No, that's wrong. That's just poor management on behalf of the mayor. The mayor doesn't understand it correctly that you can. There is, in fact, more leeway for city officials to intervene." That was the setup. Then the mayor then launches into this-- It was quite a prepared tirade, I would say, against Cuomo.

Matt Katz: Let's take a listen.

Mayor Eric Adams: Management. You mean the management that he did with the nursing homes, or the management he did when he was not having all communities, particularly Black and Brown communities, getting the vaccine, or the management he did with arguing with Bill de Blasio that we didn't have a testing site up at Yankee Stadium, or the management he did when he took a place the housing program that we saw homelessness spike in our city, or probably the management he did with the bail reform? Is that what you're talking about that created the ruckus that we're facing?

Matt Katz: Those were very specific, and Liz, like you said, does seem like he came with receipts to that press conference.

Elizabeth Kim: Oh, he stole my words, Matt. I was going to say he came with receipts to that press conference.

Matt Katz: Let's play the next clip where he zooms out a little bit and compares being mayor of New York City and governor of New York.

Mayor Eric Adams: Mayor is not being governor. You can't just hide out in a mansion. You have to get among-- Some of you go to my town halls. I say this all the time. New Yorkers have five fingers, but the one they love the most. For him to state management and that we should not do involuntary removal, ask him when was the last time he was on the subway alone.

Ask him when did he walk up to a person with no shoes on, no shirt on, in the dead of winter, yelling and screaming, about to push someone on the tracks and say-- Tell me how would he manage that? Ask him, "How would you take that person inside if that person says, 'I'm going nowhere?'" What would he do? He'll manage it away. He'll do a PowerPoint. Come on.

Matt Katz: The PowerPoint dig, Liz, how about that?

Elizabeth Kim: Right. Now, to be fair, Cuomo is not saying that he's not going to do involuntary moves. What Cuomo is arguing is that there are other ways to bring the mentally ill to hospitals, to shelter. I think the mayor is using this moment to say that Cuomo is out of touch. He doesn't really understand New Yorkers. That dig about when was the last time he took the subway alone was a really good one because it is a question I think that a lot of--

It's a fair question to put to Andrew Cuomo was, "When was the last time you took the subway alone?" He's not really known to take a subway or public transit to his press conferences. He likes to show up in his Dodge Charger or muscle car. It was a very, very effective way to attack Cuomo. It merely makes you wonder that if he continues to do more of this, how much does it hurt Cuomo, who is right now the front-runner in polls by quite a large margin. Does this, in fact, eat away at Cuomo's lead? It would be ironic because it is coming from a candidate who is very much in the same moderate lane as Cuomo.

Matt Katz: I was going to say there's some overlap in constituency there and supporters there, for sure.

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly. That's why it hurts more. That's why it can be more effective. I think the other thing that makes it effective is, for all of the mayor's flaws, I think the one thing about him is he has a certain credibility or authenticity as a real New Yorker. I think just a few weeks ago, he was at a town hall where he talked about visiting an old girlfriend in Rockaway and taking that long A Train ride. The mayor can talk credibly about a lived experience in New York in a way that the former governor can't.

Matt Katz: Yes. New York City, that is.

Elizabeth Kim: New York City, I should say.

Matt Katz: Not New York State. Liz, we will let you get back to reporting out the breaking news this morning. Again, charges against Mayor Adams have been dismissed. My guest, Elizabeth Kim, reporter at Gothamist and WNYC. Liz, thanks so much for bringing us your reporting.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Matt.

 

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