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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Mayor Adams held his weekly news conference yesterday, always does it on Tuesdays, expressing his pleasure in city priorities including in the New York state budget that got finalized over the weekend including an extension of mayoral control of the public schools. Much of the Q&A with reporters this time around centered on his reported pick of former Giuliani chief staff Randy Mastro for the position of corporation counsel, that means chief lawyer for the City of New York, and also on the protests at the local universities over the Israel-Gaza war and the deployment of the NYPD in some of those cases.

To talk about what the mayor had to say about those issues primarily, I'm joined now as on most Wednesdays following these Tuesday news conferences by Liz Kim, WNYC and Gothamist reporter covering the mayor. Hi, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Starting with the campus protests and now encampments and the involvement of the NYPD in shutting them down, the mayor pointed to what he called outside agitators in describing the arrests at NYU. Here is 30 seconds of what he said.

Mayor Adams: The number of bottles that were thrown, chairs thrown at them. People who peacefully protest for an issue, they're not throwing bottles and chairs. We know that we have acknowledged and saw across the country there are people who come, have nothing to do with the issue, and they want to aggravate. Now, if those police officers didn't show a high level of discipline, this could have been an ugly situation.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams yesterday. Liz, is the presence of outside actors widely reported?

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor is invoking what has been a very common theory about protests in general. This is a claim that has been made starting with the Civil Rights Movement, but when it comes to whether there's actual credible evidence that there are outsiders who are infiltrating the demonstrations with the specific purpose of trying to stoke violence, that's unclear. The mayor gave the argument there that he doesn't think that people who come to protest for a specific cause would go out of their way to throw bottles, throw chairs at police officers, which is what happened on Tuesday night at NYU.

He also pointed out that some of the tents used by the protestors who had established encampments at Columbia and also NYU he thought they were very similar. That's suggesting that perhaps it's one organizer who's buying the tents. I would say that those two reasons put together, I don't know that that seems like very concrete evidence that points to outsiders. The protestors themselves have at times complained about maybe you would call them provocateurs that they believe are outside of their movement, that they're not students, that they have been stalking some, not violence but adding some inflammatory language to the protests.

That's been said, but I think I would point out what's important here is this is a very common theory. Under Mayor de Blasio, city officials also complained about outside agitators during the 2020 George Floyd protests. Again, even at that time, there really wasn't any concrete evidence that came out afterwards. Although that was a moment too that was a lot more violent, there was a lot more looting going on there.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor seemed to say that the city is coordinating in some way with the colleges. Did he specify on what exactly or how?

Elizabeth Kim: Because these are private institutions, NYPD cannot go onto these private campuses and take action without being called by the officials at these universities. With respect to Columbia, what happened last week was the president did write an email, did reach out to the NYPD and ask them to come in and make those arrests, and they made about over 100 arrests. The mayor did, though, this week clarify that the NYPD can come in if there is something like an imminent threat. That was something that I asked him about yesterday if he could give some examples of that and I think you have some tape of that.

Brian Lehrer: We sure do. Here's the mayor's response to Liz's question about the NYPD intervening without being invited by the university leaders if there's an imminent threat. Liz asked, what's an imminent threat? Here's the mayor.

Mayor Adams: I've seen an imminent threat is starting to fire. Examples, starting to fire, assaulting someone, placing someone's life in imminent danger, things like that, destroying property. We are going to go in because if you are creating an imminent threat, we're going to respond.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, to clarify further, are universities and colleges given special leeway to police themselves that other private institutions are not given or is the imminent threat requirement without being invited true for any NYPD intervention anywhere?

Elizabeth Kim: I'm not an expert on this, but I believe that that imminent threat applies everywhere. That's exactly when the NYPD can come in and take action. If someone is being assaulted, if there's property being destroyed, they can come in and there's a real threat to somebody's life or property that makes total sense. I think the mayor was trying to make this more clear because initially, he had come out and said, "Listen, this is a private institution, we can only come in if you invite us to come in, if you say that this is necessary, if you're saying that you need us to remove these encampments for you." He was saying, "We are willing to do that."

Brian Lehrer: Did the mayor get asked yesterday? I saw most but not all of the news conference. I'm curious if the mayor got asked about NYPD treatment of the protesters who they did arrest. A lot of people, certainly among the protesters and I think even a lot of other people, are surprised that people were actually arrested and not just cleared out. I see a lot of the charges have already been dropped. Was the mayor asked anything about that?

Elizabeth Kim: He wasn't and I was a little surprised about that because coming off of Tuesday night, there were reports that the police used tasers. I'm sorry, not tasers, but--

Brian Lehrer: I don't know what.

Elizabeth Kim: What is the spray?

Brian Lehrer: Tear gas?

Elizabeth Kim: Not tear gas. I'm so sorry, I'm just blanking on it. They used some kind of force that they were quite shocked that the police would use that.

Brian Lehrer: Pepper spray?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, I think it was something along those lines, like pepper spray. Not tasers, but some kind of pepper spray on protestors. That's questionable. That was the first time we had heard of it being used on student protestors. That also goes back, ties into this theory about outside agitators. What historians have said about that kind of claim is that it's been a convenient way for government officials to perform a crackdown against protesters with the idea that the public is more willing to swallow something like that if they feel that these are not members of their own community.

It is interesting that we are at this moment where we are seeing the police escalate their force a little bit more against the protesters and the mayor is also coming out and saying he believes that these are people that are not from New York City and coming in and causing trouble.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I don't want to turn this into another call-in, we've been doing this in recent days, about the protest or the encampments and who's right and who's wrong on any of that, but with respect to the mayor, we can take some phone calls on the NYPD's involvement. If you have any questions or comments or firsthand experiences from within the encampments, if you're listening in the encampments, that's fine, or from whatever point of view, but pertinent to the mayor, pertinent to the NYPD for Liz Kim, 212-433-WNYC, 433- 9692, call or text.

Elizabeth Kim: Brian, just to clarify. I meant to-

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Elizabeth Kim: -say it's Mace.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Mace. Wow, Mace. Spraying Mace. If they were, you don't know if that's confirmed.

Elizabeth Kim: That has been reported.

Brian Lehrer: It has.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, it has been reported. Protesters who were there said that they had experienced it. That really is a good question to put to the mayor about when in these instances should the NYPD be resorting to something like that.

Brian Lehrer: On the imminent threat standard, I have a listener texting something. Tell me if you can confirm that this is true or if it's not. This says, "NYPD chief of patrol, Chell, suggested they did not see the imminent threat that the Columbia president said was there." You know anything about that?

Elizabeth Kim: This was when the university invited, I shouldn't say invited, but asked the NYPD to come in. That was the original circumstance in which the police came in and made the arrest.

Brian Lehrer: Right, and there doesn't have to be an imminent threat in that case perceived by the NYPD because they were invited.

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. What the mayor wanted to make clear to the public was that that's not the only condition in which the NYPD would come in. I think that that is an important distinction to make. If, in fact, we saw something going on inside the campus, and this is regardless of whether it's a protest, but if somehow something happens inside a private campus that endangers the lives of the people there, then, of course, the NYPD will come in.

Brian Lehrer: One other thing about the mayor's relationship to all of this, he cited in the news conference his own involvement in protests as a young man. How does he distinguish the right to protest that he enjoyed from what requires NYPD intervention, or why did he cite his own background in this respect?

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor always wants to remind the public that he too was once an activist who fought against injustice. What he stresses is that it should be done in a peaceful and orderly manner. That, of course, bumps up against the reality of protests is that they're sometimes not always peaceful, especially when the NYPD comes in. It can get pretty hairy sometimes, but also in terms of like, what exactly is a peaceful protest? We're testing the limits of that now with rhetoric and what kind of rhetoric makes people feel unsafe.

Brian Lehrer: All right, let's go on to the other big topic at the mayor's news conference yesterday, and that was his apparent choice of an attorney, Randy Mastro, to join the administration in the role of corporation counsel. We're going to play a clip of the mayor in a minute, but I wonder if you would explain the significance of the role of corporation counsel, which is not a household term to many of our listeners, but the colloquial here is the city's top lawyer, right?

Elizabeth Kim: Right. It's known as the city's top lawyer. This is the person who is appointed to be in charge of the city's law department, which currently has around 850 lawyers. This is the person who is in charge of defending the city in civil cases, and not just the city, it's also the City Council and the other city agencies. They would also take on cases on behalf of the city as well. It's a very prestigious and powerful position. This is the person who also shapes the city's approach to these lawsuits.

For example, when someone from the public brings a complaint and soothes the city, this is a person who needs to decide how much in these cases do I take into account the fairness of the issue. At what point do we decide that this citizen, this New Yorker has a legitimate complaint, and should we settle?

Some corporation counsels have, in the past, decided that they should aggressively defend the city at all costs and avoid any kind of settlement. This is a very important philosophical issue that a corporation counsel needs to think through. I do want to say that the mayor has not officially nominated Randy Castro.

Brian Lehrer: Mastro.

Elizabeth Kim: What happened was, as we spoke about last week, the New York Times broke the story that he was thinking about doing it. Since then, other outlets, including myself, have also confirmed that, that this is someone that he is seriously considering. What happened is that in the wake of the New York Times story, there was a lot of backlash to the idea that he might nominate Randy Mastro because of his extensive controversial resume, mostly as a private attorney. That is what is drawing the most scrutiny. Just to back up just to give our listeners a fuller portrait of who Randy Mastro is. He's a former federal prosecutor.

He worked under Giuliani when Giuliani became mayor. He then became Giuliani's chief of staff, and then he was promoted to deputy mayor of operations. He has about five years of experience working in City Hall. What's controversial is his work as a private attorney. He's taken cases involving Chevron and pollution. He's defended former governor Chris Christie in the Bridgegate scandal. He's taken a lot of NIMBY cases that I think a lot of New Yorkers might be more familiar with like against bike lanes, homeless shelters. He's also taken on cases to fight key policies that the city has advocated for like rent regulation, the $15 minimum wage in 2016, and then most recently, congestion pricing.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, he's representing New Jersey. We were just talking about Randy Mastro on the show the other week in a whole other context. He's representing the State of New Jersey suing New York over the imminent impending congestion pricing fee. They couldn't find a top lawyer other than Randy Mastro with all those things you listed, plus the current lawsuit that he's in the lead of arguing for against New York's congestion pricing? They couldn't find anyone else other than Randy Mastro?

Elizabeth Kim: That's exactly the question that a lot of people are asking, especially those people on the Council. There were a large body of the Council, the Black, Latino, and Asian caucus, they issued a letter this week saying that they don't support Randy Mastro, and they called him unfit to serve. Even before the mayor has made this nomination, there are signs that he's not going to get through. That's pretty remarkable. I want to also point out that this is a very new moment for the city to have this kind of confirmation process. This resulted because of a recent change in the charter that gave the City Council approval for the position of court counsel.

Brian Lehrer: Because it's like the Senate has to approve a lot of the nominees of the president for cabinet positions, but I didn't know that the City Council had to approve any of the mayor's appointees. Is it only for corporation counsel or also for other things? Do you know?

Elizabeth Kim: It's not only for corporation counsel, but it's a very small handful of roles I was told, and this first was instituted when the mayor nominated Sylvia Hinds Radix. Now she is the corporation counsel who has recently, we were told, step down and there have been reports, I should say, citing unnamed sources, that she's been pushed out. This is really a new moment in which a corporation counsel nominee might be contested by the Council.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting.

Elizabeth Kim: The way it works is if-- Yes.

Brian Lehrer: I was just going to say we have to take a break. We're going to take a break, but we're going to come back and segue from what you were just saying to the really interesting, and maybe it can be characterized as cheeky, question that you asked the mayor about this and in a way, potentially offering him an exit ramp from being rejected by City Council.

We'll continue on that when we continue with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Liz Kim, on the mayor's Tuesday news conference right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, who joins us most Wednesdays after the mayor holds his weekly Tuesday news conference. The only time all week when reporters can generally ask the mayor about topics that they choose and that he doesn't dictate. We're in the middle of talking about the mayor defending his reported choice of former Giuliani deputy mayor, and lawyer for many Republican party causes like defending Chris Christie and Bridgegate, and other things that are considered anti-climate, anti-homeless people, currently against New York suing on behalf of New Jersey against congestion pricing.

Why Randy Mastro? Before the break, Liz was describing how, under a recent change in the city charter, the City Council actually gets to vote up or down on the nomination of someone for the city's chief lawyer, the position known as corporation counsel. Liz, you want to set up the question that you asked?

Elizabeth Kim: Throughout my reporting on this, one thing I have heard about Randy Mastro from some people is that he's an excellent lawyer. Whether you agree or disagree with him, he's very good at his job. Not only that, but I reached out to Joe Lhota. Now, Joe Lhota had worked with Randy Mastro together under the Giuliani administration.

Brian Lehrer: Another former deputy--

Elizabeth Kim: He was the budget director, correct. He started as budget director when Randy Mastro was chief of staff, and then they both rose together and they were both deputy mayors. I think what comes off there was, even there, he was seen as this very fiercely loyal, but also in-your-face City Hall power broker, but he was also seen there as pretty effective. He negotiated with the labor unions, he was able to negotiate with the City Council. The thing that has been bandied about by some of my sources was, you know what? He would make a pretty good maybe deputy mayor for Mayor Adams.

Especially the Adams administration has often been criticized as being disorganized, as having multiple power centers. The idea was perhaps maybe someone like a Mastro can come in, because he has experience, and maybe impose a kind of order at City Hall, which is something I think a lot of people think that Adams needs. Even with this process, you see how chaotic it's become. Just the idea that it would come out in this way and that there's so much backlash to it already. It's only now that they're trying to wage a little bit of a public campaign to get people to understand who Randy Mastro is. It just seems a little bit like they've done it backwards.

This has happened before with legislation too. I was thinking, would the mayor consider just appointing him as a deputy mayor or someone on his administration without having to go through the Council?

Brian Lehrer: The mayor said this.

Mayor Adams: I'm hoping that anyone we put up for any nomination, they have opportunity to sell their story and let them know their real story, not what's printed about them, but I think it's very healthy for people to be able to sit down and be able to say, "We're willing to answer questions no matter who we put up."

Brian Lehrer: Pretty interesting. I think we would all look forward to that process. Who knows, maybe Randy Mastro would sell himself to City Council as somebody who would be very effective representing the interest of the city, including laws passed by the City Council that might outweigh all these marks against them, certainly in the judgment of many of the members of City Council who are politically progressive and would object to a lot of his past clients. I guess that's the drama we may be about to see, huh?

Elizabeth Kim: The question, though, Brian, is, do we even get there? The way this process works is it first has to go through a committee that's a nine-member committee that includes Speaker Adrian Adams. It could be that there's a hearing, so that would be interesting by itself. If Mayor Adams does in fact go through with this, then Randy master does get to sit for a hearing in which he is questioned by the committee. It's the committee that then would decide whether to proceed and allow the vote to go before the entire Council. Now, what I've been hearing is that there are committee members that are very reluctant and don't see a path for Mastro.

There's a question of whether it would go to a full vote, but certainly, if he is in fact nominated, there would be that hearing. I can't remember the last time we've had a hearing like this that is so reminiscent of a controversial Supreme Court nominee, for example. The other question I thought was, is the administration going to start introducing him, for example, to the committee members? In some way, trying to maybe bridge the gap between how they perceive him and what the administration thinks he could bring to the job.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, on the departure of the present corporation counsel creating this opening, the post reports that she was forced out for objecting to having to defend Adams. City Hall denies that, but do you have anything on that? Sometimes, we get a situation where a lawyer for a branch of government will so object to the policies that they're being asked to defend that they won't defend particular policies. Do you think anything like that happened in this case?

Elizabeth Kim: That was certainly one of the first things that came to the minds of some of the more critical Council members. Many of them gave statements at the outset, which is this is the city's lawyer. This is not your lawyer, Mayor Adams. That is very much alluding to the fact that the mayor has this sexual assault case, which the former corporation counsel had agreed to take. She was questioned about that during one of the mayor's press conferences. She basically said it was at her discretion. She didn't really give a lengthy explanation other than to say that the mayor was a transit officer at the time that this allegedly happened.

The mayor has adamantly denied any wrongdoing in this case. He says he doesn't even recollect who this woman is. It was up to her, and she chose to take the case. There was a lot of speculation once this announcement that he wanted to appoint someone new came up. Obviously, people's minds immediately went to that case and thought, "Was there any pushback that was made internally that we did not hear about?" I should say that Sylvia Hinds-Radix herself is yet to publicly comment on any of this.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM, New York, WNJT FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, NET COM, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey public radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. Just a few minutes left with our lead Eric Adams reporter, Liz Kim, on the mayor's Tuesday news conference.

I will say on the pro-Mastro side that we're getting a few texts. One listener writes, "Why can't City Hall hire a bulldog?" Another one who says, "I was a temp who worked with Randy 25 years ago. He was respected and nice to work for."

Also, at the news conference yesterday, I see he was defended by Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg, who cited some more liberal bona fides of Mastro's like he chairs the Citizens Union, a very long time, widely respected good government group in New York City. He's been the vice chair formerly of the Legal Aid Society of all things, so I don't know, mixed record?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. Although I would point out that that's really not his most prominent legal work. You could say a lot about what people choose to do in terms of the boards that they want to sit on, but at the end of the day, what the Council is going to be examining are his big cases. His big cases were for clients like Chevron, Chris Christie, the real estate industry. This is what would go into his obituary, a pie in the story. Not so much formally being the chair of the board on Legal Aid or Citizens Union. I think it's fair. I think it's fair for the Council to dig into those really high-profile cases.

Brian Lehrer: We're pretty much out of time, but before you go, the mayor seemed pleased yesterday with the outcome of the state budget process which we've covered so much that I wanted to give you the chance to at least say one word about the mayor's take. He says they got everything they wanted, the extension of mayoral control of the schools, which wasn't supposed to make it into the budget package. What else?

Elizabeth Kim: I think the mayor is correct in that. I think the mayor can take a lot of satisfaction in this budget cycle, especially because he's struggling with popularity. He went into Albany this year with not a lot of political capital, and I think it's quite a win for him to come away with mayoral control under the budget. The thought going in was that the legislature was going to force him to wait for that until June, which is when it expires. The fact that he was able to rest another two years, sure he wanted four, but they gave him two, they did condition it on class sizes.

You could argue that was something that he's supposed to do anyway because that is a law for the city to begin to shrink class sizes, and they did give him more money to do that as well. I think the mayor can come away feeling that he got a lot of his priorities addressed. There's also housing and there's also he wanted more control over illegal cannabis shops and he got all of that.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there for this week. Thanks as always to Liz Kim, WNYC and Gothamist City Hall reporter, lead Eric Adams reporter. I anticipate we will talk to you next Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Thank you, Brian.

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