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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Matt Katz from the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom filling in for Brian today. Coming up on today's show, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, she will give us her take on the Democratic Party's moves to quickly coalesce around Kamala Harris as the nominee, and she'll take your calls. That's in about a half hour. Plus, later in the show, why election insecurity can be a risk for national security, and any self-identified childless cat ladies or cat gentlemen out there who want to respond to the resurfaced comments that Republican vice presidential nominee J. D. Vance made criticizing you.

We'll want to hear from you and get your take on this moment in the campaign. That'll be near the end of today's show. First, we start today with city politics and a scoop from our very own Brigid Bergin. You know Brigid from sitting in this chair that I'm in right now, filling in for Brian Lehrer, and you know her from years of political reporting in New York. I'm particularly fond of Brigid's work when she's breaking news about corruption and elections, which is exactly what happened this week with her story available now on Gothamist headlined, "Mayor Adams's 2021 campaign flagged for $2.3 million gap in fundraising records."

Brigid found that Mayor Adams, who's up for a re-election next year, faces significant financial penalties, which could gravely affect his re-election war chest, after he fell to document campaign expenses, including some questionable ones. Brigid read through a 900-page draft audit that she obtained through a public records request, and it gave her a look into the spending of a candidate who used taxpayer funding matching money to fuel his election victory. Brigid, good morning. Great story. Thanks for coming on the show.

Brigid Bergin: Hey, Matt. Great to be with you.

Matt Katz: Listeners, does this bother you, a potential campaign finance scandal or are there far more significant challenges that the city is facing that are far more important to you, or maybe these campaign spending issues reflect on Mayor Adams's tenure as a mayor, and if so, is there another candidate you're interested in for 2025? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Brigid, tell us about these documents that you obtained, and why you decided to go out and request them in the first place.

Brigid Bergin: Just to start, what I requested was a copy of the draft audit that the Campaign Finance Board did for Mayor Adams's 2021 campaign. I requested it as a follow-up to a story I did earlier this year after looking at the communications between the Adams campaign and the Campaign Finance Board. Without going into too much of the weeds, the Campaign Finance Board communicates with campaigns throughout an election cycle, and requests documentation to ensure that they're disclosing how they're spending their money, how they're raising their money, and it happens on a regular basis.

The earlier story that I had done found that, at a certain point in the election cycle, there were just a complete drop-off in responses from the campaign to questions from the Campaign Finance Board, and yet the Campaign Finance Board continued to give the mayor's campaign matching money to the tune of $10 million so not insubstantial matching money. I was curious given what we have seen throughout the past year, investigations into the mayor's campaign, one of his top fundraisers had her home rated by the FBI last year. The mayor's phone and electronic devices were seized.

What did we know about how he was raising and spending that money? When I say he, I am referring to his campaign because obviously, the mayor has a team of people who are responsible for doing this work. I put in a FOIA request and the result was this voluminous 900-page document that I went through and also, sort the advice of experts, who do this work all the time to try and make sure that, what I was seeing that was standing out is, "Wow, this seems a little weird to me." Did that seem weird to someone who does this work all the time?

Matt Katz: What stood out to you as being unusual, or weird, or out of place? You've read many of these things and like you said, you talked to these experts. What was the most unusual?

Brigid Bergin: Obviously, we have the headline. There's $2.3 million in expenses that need additional documentation. Now, some of that stuff is pretty run-of-the-mill. There's a lot of spending that goes on in these campaigns. This was a huge campaign. They raised-- it was about $20 million. They've got that $10 million of matching funds. They had $10,000 transactions. This is according to the campaign's compliance attorney Vito Pitta. Not everything is going to be perfect. That is normal.

To be clear, the Campaign Finance Board audits every single candidate that runs for city office, whether you take public financing or not. The audit process in of itself, totally normal, nothing strange about that. The findings raised some red flags. One of the things that jumped out a huge amount-- they had a lot of television ads. They didn't have all the documentation, not that they didn't have invoices to pay for the ads, but they didn't have the specific broadcast details.

When did the ad air? How long was it? What was the script that's required as part of the Campaign Finance Board's requirements for that type of expenditure? Then you get into stuff that's a little bit odder. There was $10,000 for invoices, about eight invoices altogether to buy CAL Automotive. It's an auto dealership in Brooklyn and another for invoices to the City of New York. The Campaign Finance Board really meticulously audits these types of expenses.

In the notes, it's clear that this is for car repairs and damage that appears to have been incurred through an auto accident and for tolls and parking tickets. When I noticed those expenses, and when the experts who reviewed this document in addition, saw that that really raised some red flags, why would taxpayers be paying for that? How is that in the furtherance of the campaign?

Matt Katz: Is there something explicitly that forbids using money for that kind of thing, or is it some of this interpretation and you have to show some connection to the campaign? How does that work?

Brigid Bergin: There are very specific rules that candidates agree to follow when they accept these matching funds. There's also a law that governs how this money can be used. Now, there are some who say that this mix of rules and law can be confusing and hard to interpret. That may be why the campaign submitted these invoices, to begin with. The board was going to have to make a determination about whether or not this was an acceptable practice. What experts told me is, they'd never seen anything like that.

Matt Katz: I saw this note in some of that you had referenced in your story that was on some of these donations. "I use my parents' credit card." What was that about?

Brigid Bergin: Within this, as I mentioned, really lengthy draft audit, there were 22 different sections of the Campaign Finance Board's, findings of things that raised questions for them. Some of that was related to spending, some of that was related to donations. Now, over the past year, we've heard about issues with donations to Mayor Adams's campaign specifically. There were six people who were indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney's office for a straw donor scheme.

What that means is, they were found guilty of submitting or trying to get people to submit donations that were not actually from those individuals. Under the law, the person who submits the donation needs to be the person who's making the donation. You can't give money and then get reimbursed for it. That's where the term straw donation comes into play. Now, in that particular case, no one from the Adams campaign was accused of any wrongdoing, or found to be guilty of any wrongdoing.

These were people who presumably were trying to seek influence from the administration by concocting this scheme and then ultimately getting caught. What is striking about this audit is there are about 50 donations here that are very clear in the notes when the people made the donations that they say, "This money is not from them." They write notes that say things to the extent of my fiancee's making this donation. This is the donation from my friend, or I borrowed my parents' credit card.

Then in the audit, the recommendation from the Campaign Finance Board, is that they should return those donations. Now, it's interesting that they kept them, to begin with, but those are very clear. Those are donations that are not acceptable, shouldn't have been accepted, could have been refunded, and then, the campaign could have put a note as to why they were being refunded. When I asked the campaign some very specific questions about this audit, their compliance attorney was out of town, sent me some statements, said that they have followed the letter of the law, suspected that those particular donations were associated with this case, and I would say, brushed off the question, but has insisted that they will respond to this audit as needed. They do have a deadline coming up pretty quickly. It's the end of this month, the month of August.

I'll note, Matt, that this comes after-- and this was a point that experts made to me over and over again. So many of the questions that are raised in this document are questions that the Campaign Finance Board has been asking for years, not recently, but dating back to when this campaign started fundraising. They receive what are called statement reviews. They raise questions.

They want to clarify certain things around matching claims, who's raising money on behalf of the candidate, and making clear, because part of the point of this program is not only are you receiving taxpayer dollars in the form of matching funds, but you are committing to transparency. That is for any candidate who takes the money or not, but you must disclose how you were getting the money and how you were spending the money.

There are very specific rules to it.

Some who have participated in the program will complain that it's onerous. I've also talked to other people who've used this program over the course of years, and they will say that it's actually gotten much easier, that there's an application that you can use any time of day and just upload these documents so that even before the Campaign Finance Board is asking the question, you may have already supplied the answer, and ultimately, that's the way the program should work, that you are ahead of the questions that are being asked because the documentation is already there.

Matt Katz: Right. What's the potential penalty here? He doesn't submit the right documentation. They find that these are irregularities. What could happen, either, in regards to this campaign fund and then going forward for his reelection?

Brigid Bergin: In terms of this particular campaign fund, the 2021 campaign fund, the Campaign Finance Board identified two big buckets. There's this $2.3 million in expenses that need to be accounted for and that, ultimately, the campaign's on the hook to the extent that they can not justify them. Then, there's also this half million dollars that was left in the bank account at the end of the election cycle.

When a candidate receives matching funds, if there's a balance left in their account, that money has to go back to the Campaign Finance Board because, presumably, a portion of that is taxpayer dollars. I think one could argue, at a minimum, you're seeing a half-million-dollar payment that needs to go back, but that could grow much larger. Now, that money could not have been used in the 2025 campaign, the money that was raised in 2021.

If he has to make a payment, that becomes very, very challenging. Now, in very rare circumstances, the Campaign Finance Board has made the decision to deny a candidate public matching funds entirely. Matt, you and I have been together a long time. If we go in the way back machine all the way to 2013, former City Comptroller John Liu, running for mayor, two of his campaign associates were convicted of a straw donor scheme that was ahead of the decision when the Campaign Finance Board had to decide whether or not they were going to give matching funds.

When it came time to make that decision, they did not give loose campaign matching money, and his lawyer described it as the death know of the campaign. Deathblow is another term that has been used. It made it very difficult to campaign in a field of other candidates that are receiving public matching funds. The decision that the board has to make, and they have to make it before the end of the year because the first payment goes out to candidates in December who qualify for matching funds that is going to be a very big deal.

There's going to be a lot of attention paid to what decision they make, and a lot of pressure, I think, on these five board members to come to a decision that is viewed by the candidates, but also by the public as fair and the proper use of taxpayer dollars.

Matt Katz: We have a text from a listener, "Where there's smoke, there's fire between the associations with people being charged as foreign agents, inability to simply answer which state he is a resident of, and now, these campaign finance shenanigans. Adams is so plainly corrupt. I can't wait for him to lose next year." We have, though, a caller who has a different perspective that we're going to get to right after a quick break. We're talking to Brigid Bergin about her new reporting on Adam's campaign finances. We'll be right back after this.

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Matt Katz: It's The Brian Lehrer Show and WNYC. I'm Matt Katz, reporter with WNYC and Gothamist, filling in for Brian today. If you're just joining us, we're speaking with my colleague Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent, about how Mayor Eric Adams failed to document $2.3 million in campaign finance expenses. We want to get some takes from our callers. Lawrence in Brooklyn Heights. Hi, Lawrence. Thanks for calling in. You're on with Brigid.

Lawrence: Hey. Hi. You guys just read a text on the air that's the exact opposite of what I called in to say, the smoke and fire thing. Look, you even introduced this by saying Adams use campaign matching funds to fuel his rise to mayor. I'm sorry, I can't-- and I'm like, "Isn't that what that money's for?" You made it sound outrageous, but it's not. Second, I would say this has been going on for years now. A lot of smoke, like people raising smoke, the feds executing warrants on Adams and seizing his device. Nobody's shown us the fire yet, and that's starting to bug me a little bit. I do appreciate Ms. Bergin's reporting. It's important, but show me the fire. Yes, I don't--

Matt Katz: Yes. Fair enough, Lawrence. Thanks. Brigid, the campaign matching funds did fuel-- it helped his campaign. I wasn't saying anything nefarious there, but he does make a point. So many negative headlines about Adam's campaign spending, and yet he's still in office. He is not been charged with any crimes.

Brigid Bergin: Absolutely.

Matt Katz: [Crosstalk] A lot of smoke.

Brigid Bergin: Lawrence, I hear your point, and more than one thing can be true. Absolutely, public matching funds are essential to many candidates in their ability to run a successful campaign. There's nothing wrong with using them. That's why they're available. There's nothing wrong with raising enough money to get a large amount of them. Obviously, when you sign up for this program, you're also agreeing to a spending cap. You can only get so much of it.

There's nothing, at this point, that would suggest the mayor did anything that was ill toward in that fashion. I will note that one of the other findings, because there were so many findings in the draft audit that I didn't include everything in this first initial story, was he did exceed the spending cap during the primary, which one of the experts I spoke to said was particularly unusual just because it's so high, to begin with. You're talking about millions of dollars here, so to exceed that is to say that you're spending a lot of money.

With the investigations, yes, it is 100% true that we have seen investigations that can go on for a period of time. You don't have to look too far back. Mayor de Blasio's campaign faced investigations for his fundraising for a political non-profit, for his fundraising for state senate campaigns. Ultimately, both the Manhattan District Attorney's office and the Southern District actually issued a memo to say basically, yes, a lot of smoke, yes, some conduct that was not probably in the spirit of the law, but that they did not decide to bring any case because of how challenging it was to indict.

I think, at this point, there still are some open questions and some open investigations that presumably, we will either see something from sooner rather than later, or to Lawrence's point, potentially we will get some clarification from those offices. Not unlike we saw with the de Blasio administration, which also happened ahead of his 2017 reelection clarifying that, yes, there are been these investigations, but either a case is moving forward or it's not.

Nonetheless, it doesn't necessarily have to-- as a reporter, I'm not the lawyer, I'm not the prosecutor. My job is to report from the perspective and accountability and to tell you this is what this document says. This is what the rules are. This is what experts tell me. Then, is you, the reader, the listener, the public to make your decision from there. I do think it is still reasonable, particularly, when someone who is responsible for administering a more than $100 billion budget for someone to say, "Okay, this is how you have to manage the city's finances. How did you manage them for your own campaign when you were looking to take this office and to raise questions about that when there are gaps when rules have not been followed to the degree that they are supposed to? There is no question in that case that these rules were not followed in the way that they were supposed to. That's just a fact that's backed up by hundreds of pages of documents.

Matt Katz: Sure.

Brigid Bergin: What people decide to do with that fact, that becomes a decision for the Campaign Finance Board and for the public when they go to vote again.

Matt Katz: Right. I still find it hard to imagine that this would be the issue that enough voters would necessarily make a decision on who to vote for based off of like campaign finance regularities, but still, Adam's potential opponents in next year's elections. At least one, I believe in your follow-up story today in Gothamist, smell some blood over this. What have we heard from declared and undeclared potential candidates who might be opposing Adams next year?

Brigid Bergin: I reached out to three of the top candidates who have declared or are exploring bids for mayor next year, and former Comptroller Scott Stringer was the one who had the most pointed statement. He basically drew that connection that this indication that there were a lack of attention to detail when it came to his own campaign finances, he likened that to some of what we've seen in these budget fights and a lack of attention to detail there.

Then took it even a step further saying that he saw this is a sign that there was some serious problems within City Hall and how it was managed. That is a key part of how he's trying to position his campaign, talking about needing better management at City Hall.

Matt Katz: That's interesting. Tying it into a larger issue as opposed to just hanging his hat on just this. Listeners, we have a few more minutes with our senior political reporter, Brigid Bergin. If you want to give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. The election is next year. Remind us that Scott Stringer is in there. We had a new candidate this week and I still hear rumblings of Andrew Cuomo. Tell us what the field looks like at the moment.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we have City Comptroller Brad Lander, who made his official entrance into the field this week, put out a polished campaign, digital ad, I saw a lot of it on Twitter or X. He has been fundraising. He's been one of the probably loudest critics within city government of Mayor Adams in the Adams administration. Now, arguably, there should be some tension between the City Comptroller and the mayor's office because the City Comptroller is supposed to ensure that city funds are spent appropriately, auditing different agencies.

You can tell between the two of them it feels a little bit more personal. It feels certainly like Mayor Adams has a pretty strong disdain for the City Comptroller, and I think Lander feels pretty strongly in opposition to some of the positions that this administration has taken. He is a new entrant into the field. Of course, represents the same city council district that former Mayor Bill de Blasio represented. We're talking about that Park Slope Brownstone, Brooklyn part of the city, which has also huge voter turnout.

That makes him already with the citywide name recognition, already with this pretty strong base of support that he put together to get elected to the Comptroller's office, positions him as a real formidable candidate in this type of race. We also are seeing Brooklyn State Senator Zellnor Myrie as someone who is exploring and fundraising for this race. He represents, interestingly, the former state senate district that Eric Adams represented when he was in the New York State Senate. He also has an interesting base that he could put together.

Both of these candidates would really be to the left of Adams, and both, I think will be making arguments about more progressive policies and better management out of City Hall. A couple of other names that are floating around there, assembly members [unintelligible 00:25:22] has said that he's exploring a potential run for mayor. He would be to the left of the candidates that are to the left of the mayor. He's part of the city's Democratic Socialists of America contingent in the state assembly. A very left-leaning lawmaker.

State Senator Jessica Ramos from Queens has also been someone who's been talked about as a potential entrant to the field. Now, Matt, you mentioned a name that I haven't mentioned yet, and that of course is the biggest fish of them all, and that's former governor Andrew Cuomo. He is someone who we know has been around the city. He has been speaking at churches around the city. He hear rumblings from him popping up. We know that he is a very strong fundraiser.

We know that there's a not insignificant number of voters who continued to support him even after he left office. Resigning his position as governor in the face of 11 women coming forward, accusing him of sexual misconduct. He has certainly always felt wronged by what happened there. Does he make this bid as a way to reemerge in city politics? I think one of the biggest obstacles I have to seeing that happening is just the built intention between a mayor and a governor.

The many ways that New York City is beholden to the state and cannot do things without the state's permission. I just have a hard time seeing him in that type of position. Maybe that type of bully pulpit and being able to show strength in that position would be something that would appeal. I think just the constraints of the office itself, would strike me as stifling to someone like him. Again, there is the potential for maybe he runs for governor and against Kathy Hochul in 2026. I don't think that we have heard the last of former governor Andrew Cuomo by any means.

Matt Katz: No. It seems like he wants to be in the mix still in one way or the other. I want to take one more call before we let you go, Brigit. John in St. George, Staten Island. Hi, John. Thanks for calling.

John: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I'm concerned that candidates for office used to strive to avoid even the mere appearance of impropriety. Thanks to a certain ex-president, the bar seems to be solo that we have to dig to find it. Adams and his people are looking at, unless there's actually a conviction, there's nothing to talk about regarding where there's smoke, there's fire, or maybe there isn't.

Matt Katz: Thanks, John. Appreciate you calling. Could we just talk a little bit more about this smoke, Brigid? The Adams campaign's chief fundraiser, her home was raided last year by the FBI and that caused a flurry of headlines, but we haven't heard about that since. That's an example of there being this smoke, but no fire.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Again, I think the work of prosecutors and investigators is to be able to understand what exactly is happening and if there's a case to be made to make it, but that's a determination that they need to make under the constraints of the law. We know that Brianna Suggs, the fundraiser who we've been speaking about, she's not the only person in the orbit of Mayor Adams and his administration who has come under scrutiny.

There are other members of his administration who have had run-ins with law enforcement, one of his advisors for the Asian American community, Winnie Greco is another name that comes to mind. I do think that even if these scandals do not rise to something that are necessarily implicating the mayor himself, there are questions that have been raised throughout this administration about the type of people who are around him and some of the accusations that have been made against those individuals. We saw even just this week the New York Times wrote really a disturbing story about another accusation of sexual assault against Timothy Pearson, who is someone who is very close to Adams and very involved with the NYPD.

Those types of issues that get raised, again, they may not implicate the mayor himself directly in any sort of wrongdoing, and that's a very important point to make. However, it does become something that in the minds of certainly his opponents, other candidates running against him, and absolutely in the minds of voters that can and should be weighed as to if this is the person you think upholds the values that you want to see in City Hall and is the person who gets your vote when it comes to both the primary and general election.

Matt Katz: Regarding those accusations in that suit, Adam said, "People have a tendency when accusations are made to say, "You know what? The pressure is hot. You need to just get rid of a person. I just don't operate that way. I believe in due process and I let the process take its course." That seems to be his byword these days. Let the process take its course. I'm not going to address it really, to just push the analogy further until there's actually fire. That seems to be what he's saying.

One more thing I wanted to ask you about, Brigid. The day your story ran, Adam's teed off on the press, he said he's dealing with the most difficult journalist corps in the history of the city. First of all, I don't know if he was referring specifically to his story or anything more generally. Is that true? It seems to me that the journalist corps in the city used to be more robust. Still great and aggressive, but there used to be many, many more of us. What was that about and what do you make of what he said?

Brigid Bergin: A couple of things. First, just clarifying my story actually landed the day after-

Matt Katz: Okay. Got it.

Brigid Bergin: -his weekly press conference is one time a week that he takes questions from reporters but the press corps used to be significantly larger covering City Hall. There used to be four reporters from each of the tabloids. Newsday was a huge presence covering City Hall. The notion that my esteemed and dogged colleagues, as wonderful as they are, are the most challenging press corps just completely ignores how much the press corp has shrunk over the past few years.

I think that that is a criticism that is more reflective of how uncomfortable it is to be in that line of fire, so to speak. Certainly, I covered the de Blasio administration. That critique and frustration with the press was something that we absolutely heard from Mayor de Blasio. It was something that I think absolutely we heard from Bloomberg and Giuliani and Dinkins and Koch. It is not always comfortable to be questioned, and many of those individuals were questioned more frequently on a more reoccurring basis.

At this point, this administration has adopted this strategy of the single day where they take off-topic questions. Not surprisingly, those particular instances are a long slog of many, many questions. In past practices, mayors often took questions every day. Maybe they would have an on-topic announcement, and then afterwards they would want to take the off-topic. This is a decision from this administration it does seem, and my colleague Liz Kim, who covers the Adams administration, asked this question this past week.

"Your message is not getting through quite the way you want it to. Do you think this is the right strategy?" It will be interesting to see, particularly, as the mayor's race heats up, which, again, I don't think is going to do so in earnest until after the November election. Do they adjust their strategy? Are there more folks like our great friend Katie Honan at the city who will show up and have her phone ready to ask those questions so that we can see those slices of his responses at City Hall?

That's not the same thing as having multiple journalists in the room together to ask a question, and then when you don't get an answer to ask a follow-up and when you don't get an answer to ask another. It's credit to my colleagues who keep doing the work.

Matt Katz: Credit to you for doing the work. My guest has been Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent. Her latest for Gothamist is headlined Mayor Adam's 2021 campaign flagged for $2.3 million gap in fundraising records, and also a follow-up story on that today. Thanks for your reporting, Brigid. Talk soon.

Brigid Bergin: Thanks, Matt.

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