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Brooke Gladstone: This is the On the Media midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. Here in New York, we're not due to select our next mayor until November, but somehow it feels like we're already embroiled in pre-election chaos. What with all the recent Zohran Mamdani news and the former governor, Andrew Cuomo, news? Not to mention all the headlines generated by our current mayor, Eric Adams, who, by all appearances, made a deal with Donald Trump to avoid his own corruption charges. Adams is now running as an independent, and to do so, he'll be required to present the signatures of 7,500 New Yorkers who support him.

He actually handed in around 50,000 names, so he more than made the cutoff, but when our colleagues in the WNYC newsroom began to look at those signatures, they stumbled onto a scandal. For the pod this week, we're airing an episode of a daily podcast produced in our newsroom called NYC NOW. The episode, hosted by Christopher Werth, begins with WNYC reporter David Brand as he goes door to door in the Bronx, talking to voters about ballot petitions.

David Brand: Hi.

Jamila Brooks: Hi.

David Brand: Sorry to bother you. My name is David Brand. I'm a reporter from a public radio station called WNYC. To get onto the ballot in November, Mayor Eric Adams and other candidates for office have to submit petitions with signatures from New York City residents. Colleagues and I started talking to people who their names and signatures were submitted. Here is Jamila Brooks and wondering if that's you. If it is you, is that your signature?

Jamila Brooks: That is me, but that is not my signature. I do not sign like that.

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Christopher Werth: A WNYC investigation has found dozens of people who say their signatures were forged on petitions that the Adams campaign submitted to the city's Board of Elections. The mayor, as you probably know, skipped the Democratic primary this year, and in order to get on the ballot as an independent candidate, he needed to collect at least 7,500 signatures. He submitted 50,000. Our findings show that some of those were fraudulently obtained. In some cases, the mayor's reelection campaign even submitted signatures from dead people. Joining me now is one of the reporters on this investigation, David Brand.

David Brand: Hey, Christopher.

Christopher Werth: I've got Clayton Guza, reporter, editor, in our newsroom.

Clayton Guza: Thanks. Hi, Christopher.

Christopher Werth: The two of you, along with our colleague, Brigid Bergin, and I, have been in the trenches with you on this, have spent the past month investigating the world of political petitioning, let's call it. Clayton, I want to talk to you first, because you first noticed some of these problems back in June, and you decided to dig deeper. Can you start by walking us through the scope of the investigation that we've been working on, and what exactly did we find?

Clayton Guza: Right, so let's take everyone back and zoom out to early April. Mayor Eric Adams had just had his federal corruption charges officially dropped at the request of the Trump administration. The next day, he says, "I'm going to skip the Democratic primary and run on an independent line in November." By his telling, the indictment that came under the Biden administration, and later dismissal by Trump, had hurt his chances to win the Democratic primary.

He needed to secure a spot on an independent ballot line in November. He'd need 7,500 valid signatures in order to get it. Those would allow him to circumvent the primary and still run in November. Now, what we discovered is that this work is done by armies of petitioners with clipboards and hand canvassers, and they're going around the city asking people to sign to endorse the mayor's run on the ballot.

Christopher Werth: Yes, these are the people who, you're at Sea Town, people walk up to you, "Hey, will you sign this petition I've got here?" If you're on the subway, you might see them there.

Clayton Guza: Right. It's tedious work when it's done right. The process is supposed to prove politicians have enough support, have enough of a mandate to earn a place on the ballot in the election. From mid-April to late May, Mayor Eric Adams' campaign said it collected a tremendous amount of them, nearly 10,000 a week, to get those 50,000 signatures. We went to the Board of Elections and pulled all of them. We pulled every single signature the mayor turned in, and we spent six weeks going through them and starting to look for patterns. We found patterns of similar handwriting across several pages of petitions. Large numbers of signatures were gathered by one person in a single day.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, which would be a tremendous feat. We hit the phones. We knocked on more than 100 doors. We interviewed more than 100 people, including 10 people who collected petitions for Adams. In all, we identified more than 50 people who were listed on the forums as having signed, but had some issue with that signature. The majority of the people we talked with said their signatures were forged. Some of them, they wrote their real signatures out for us. They demonstrated their signatures. The handwriting didn't match.

Christopher Werth: Completely different.

Clayton Guza: Yes. Time and again, we kept meeting people, encountering people, talking to people who said, "That's not my signature. I didn't sign that." In other cases, they said that they were misled into signing. I didn't know I was signing for Adams. That's crazy. I would never sign for Adams. What's really interesting is we also found three instances, and there are at least three instances in these signatures, where dead people signed. In some cases, it was more difficult to find people who said that they did sign than it was to find people who said that they didn't.

Christopher Werth: I sit across the newsroom from you, and I remember sitting at my desk, and you stood up and you said, "I found dead people on these petitions."

Clayton Guza: I said, "We got a dead one." We found dead people. That's when we really realized we had something serious on our hands.

Christopher Werth: That's right. I want to get a sense of how widespread this kind of thing might be, that you're finding. You said that you found 50-some-odd signatures. Is that it? What do we know about what else is out there?

Clayton Guza: We don't know how widespread it is exactly. This is intensive work where you're looking up phone numbers, trying to reach people, door-knocking buildings where a lot of signatures are turned in from. There are thousands and thousands of people who we haven't called or gone to their door to check if they actually signed. Here's what we do know. We confirmed forgeries or signs of fraud among signatures collected by nine petitioners, nine campaign workers for Adams. Together, those petitioners who have at least some fraudulent signatures have collectively submitted 5,000 for Adams, so representing about 10% of the overall universe of signatures he submitted.

Christopher Werth: I want to go back to something that was mentioned earlier, which is that people who did sign these petitions said that they were misled into signing. I want to dive in and understand better how exactly does something like that happen?

David Brand: There's really a telltale sign of this. We had gone to the Board of Elections, photographed thousands of these forms, and we found dozens of them, each containing up to 10 signatures that were clearly folded right below Adams' name. This stood out because people working for the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presidential campaign last year in New York did the same thing to try to conceal Kennedy's name from the people they were asking to sign. Someone might see it and like, "I don't want to vote for Robert Kennedy. Why would I sign this form?" Same thing might happen here in New York City. "I don't want to vote for Mayor Adams."

Instead, a canvasser might hand them this form on a clipboard folded to obscure Adams' name. What people told us was that they were told this is to get an independent candidate on the ballot. In one case, someone told me they were told it was a totally different candidate. Then I said, "Oh, actually, you signed for Adams." They said, "Oh, I never would have signed for Eric Adams." We started calling and visiting people who signed the forms, and they said they had no idea they were signing for Adams. One woman told me the petitioner asked her to sign for another candidate altogether. She said that was Michael Blake. Many said if they knew it was for Adams, they never would have signed.

Christopher Werth: What about the people who said that their signatures were forged? How did other people, who you spoke with, react to the news when you showed them their supposed handwriting on these petitions?

David Brand: As Clayton mentioned before, we went to hundreds of doors, knocked on the door, said, "We're reporters from WNYC. This is out of the blue, but we are investigating these petitions and these signatures. Is this your signature?" They said they felt violated. We were showing people their supposed signatures and their home addresses on forms they've never seen before. They said it was creepy. I spent several hours going door to door in the River Park Towers. It's the tallest housing complex in the Bronx. There's about 5,000 people who live there, and over 100 people on Adams' petitions who are listed as living there, supposedly signed.

Christopher Werth: These are the big towers. If you're going up the Major Deegan Expressway, you'll see them right there on the side of the highway.

David Brand: That's right, those four tall towers overlooking the Harlem River. There's over 100 people on Adams' petitions who are listed as living there who they say supposedly signed. I spent about 3 hours there. I spoke with over two dozen residents. 15 of them said their signatures were forged. One of them was Jamila Brooks, the person we heard from earlier. Here's how she responded.

Jamila Brooks: This is shocking. I didn't. It's tough to even put into words, but that is not my signature. I do not even know who put my name there.

David Brand: What's that feel like, that somebody--

Jamila Brooks: If I say it, I'm going to be put in jail.

David Brand: Make you angry?

Jamila Brooks: Beyond angry.

David Brand: It's not just anger. Crystal Green is a resident of the Pomonok Houses in Queens. There was a lot of petition signatures acquired there, a lot of questionable ones. I showed up at her door, and I showed her her supposed signature inside her apartment. She said many people have already lost faith in democracy and that this kind of thing further undermines their confidence.

Crystal Green: She shouldn't be doing things like this. I mean, we already have a lot going on because people don't even believe in politics or don't believe that their vote matters anyway now, but to deal with this, this is just inappropriation, to be doing things like this.

Christopher Werth: Clayton, who exactly does collect these signatures when a campaign has to go out and gather them to get on the ballot?

Clayton Guza: I mean, if you look at traditionally or in a lot of cases with a sitting mayor four years ago, when Adams was borough president in Brooklyn and running for mayor, he turned to local Democratic clubs, volunteer groups, very traditionally, using the machine that he had built up over the years to collect signatures. He had support. It wasn't easy to find. It wasn't hard to find it.

Christopher Werth: The standard way of doing things.

Clayton Guza: Right, but now, especially when you come through the Brooklyn political class and working from state senator to borough president, very traditionally, you lean on the groups that helped you get there. That didn't happen this time around. He's circumventing the Democratic primary altogether. He's trying to run as an independent in November. He turns to this world of ballot petition firms, these third-party vendors who basically collect signatures for hire. They employ an army of subcontractors, deploy them wherever, and get signatures to get a politician, a candidate, or an issue on a ballot, basically anywhere. One of the companies he hired is called Public Appeal. They're based in Wyoming.

That's what stuck out to me early on, was that Adams' was the only campaign to hire an out-of-state firm to collect petitions. At least the only mayoral campaign in this year's race. Public Appeal is run by a man named Trent Pool. We reported back in June that Trent Pool was charged with assaulting his girlfriend at a SoHo hotel last year. He's pleaded not guilty. The Adams campaign said it terminated his contract with them after our story broke. The signatures had already been collected, though.

Christopher Werth: Yes. We should be really clear here that none of the forgeries that we found appeared to have come from the signature gatherers that Public Appeal was working with.

Clayton Guza: At least none of those who were working directly for Public Appeal. We also haven't confirmed which company each signature collector was working for, so that's right. That is right at this phase in the investigation. That's correct. This new revelation about forgeries and the type of petition folding that David was talking about has led to a lot of finger-pointing and denials.

When we reached out to Trent Pool with questions about this story, he responded by saying he had urged the Adams campaign and some of the other contractors hired to collect signatures to do automated verification checks on, "Is this person live here? Is this their address? Is this legitimate?" He says he was rebuffed in that effort. He's claiming that they said "No," that "We're not gonna do those checks. We don't need to do them." Adams' attorney said he had no idea about Pool's legal troubles, including the assault charges, when the campaign hired him. He says the campaign expected the companies it hired to do quality control.

Christopher Werth: That does bring me to a question about another company that the Adams campaign hired. It's called My Brand. David Brand, I want to ask you about My Brand. What did it say about how these signatures are vetted when they start to come in for a campaign?

David Brand: My Brand, no relation, but they are a local firm, they're based in Manhattan, and they're a marketing company that does do petitioning work for political campaigns. Adams paid them more than $200,000 to collect signatures and to, also, do some canvassing for his campaign. I spoke with the head of the petition operation. His name's Julian Hill, and he's an executive at My Brand. We talked in person outside the company's office. He said they don't do vetting of their signatures because they're just too crunched for time when campaign workers are out getting signatures.

We then spoke with the CEO of the company. His name's David Vassell. Shortly after that, Hill called me back to say no, they actually do check all of these petition sheets, and that they would never submit anything to the Board of Elections that's illegitimate or appears questionable. That still leaves questions about what we found in some of these petitions. Hill and Vassell said the company did work with a signature gatherer named Franklin Sendra. He came on our radar because we were looking through the forms he submitted, had some questions. We visited a building in Morningside Heights where Sendra said he collected more than 50 signatures. Almost everyone we talked to said those signatures were forged.

Clayton Guza: The interview that sticks out for me most from that day was when I knocked on the door of a 93-year-old woman named Lila Lieberman. She's lived in this apartment for almost 46 years, she said, it's almost half her life. There is a signature on this petition form from this apartment for an Adam Lieberman. She says not only does Adam Lieberman not live here, Adam Lieberman has been dead for years. We confirm that he's been dead since 1997. One interesting thing about Adam Lieberman, though, is that he remains a registered voter in New York City. We checked the rolls. However he got on Adam's form is unclear, but we do know he is on the record as a registered voter in New York City.

Christopher Werth: How has the Adams campaign responded to all of this reporting?

David Brand: Well, they seem to be taking it pretty seriously. Adams' attorney Vito Pitta says the campaign will hire a special counsel to conduct a full review of signatures, especially the ones attributed to dead people. He also called the allegations from Pool and Public Appeal, saying the campaign was warned about potential fraud, baseless. Now he wants to specifically review Public Appeal's signatures.

Christopher Werth: Adams has faced corruption charges that were later dismissed. His campaign has been entangled with problems around illegal donations. What risk does the mayor face here with these ballot petitions?

Clayton Guza: Because of the way the city's election law works, there is very little chance that he's going to be kicked off the ballot. His campaign submitted all 50,000 of these signatures in a single day in May in a busy part of the primary season. The system is designed to work and be enforced when other campaigns challenge your signatures, say, "Let's go through these." You only have a six-day window to challenge signatures after a campaign turns them in. It's Tuesday before Memorial Day that they turned them in; no one challenged them. No one reviewed these.

No lawyer from any other campaign or anywhere in the city, for that matter, went to the Board of Elections and said, "Let's go through these." No one, in fact, it seems, looked at them until we went down to the Board of Elections office on Adams Street in Brooklyn and pulled them all and took photographs. Outside of that process, allegations of signature fraud, petition fraud, can be litigated in the courts, civil courts, by lawsuit. The deadline to file a lawsuit in that type of case was June 10, so that too is gone. There is still the possibility that district attorneys or other prosecutors could make an inquiry into this and bring charges. None of the DA's offices have so far said that they're intending to do that.

Obviously, there's a lot to review. More broadly, I think here, a lot of these signatures came from buildings and areas that Adams calls his base. A lot of NYCHA projects, a lot of working-class neighborhoods, a lot of dense high rises, a lot of the working people in neighborhoods where election data from 2021 shows helped him go into office. When we talk to people who said they didn't sign but were on the forms as signing anyway, there's a real emotional reaction that you've heard from some of the tape we presented here. There's a real betrayal among a lot of people. Whatever reaction this investigation gets from local prosecutors, the reaction it gets from the voters is more important.

Christopher Werth: All right, that was WNYC's Clayton Guza and David Brand. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.

Clayton Guza: Christopher, thank you.

David Brand: Thanks, Christopher.

Christopher Werth: For more on our reporting on Mayor Adams' petition signatures, you can go to our new site, gothamist.com.

Brooke Gladstone: NYC NOW delivers local news from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday, and evening. Listen on the WNYC app or wherever you get your podcasts. On On the Media this week, we'll be discussing the silencing of Trump critics and Jubilee, a YouTube channel with 10 million subscribers that say it seeks to promote deeper understanding, but just kind of looks and sounds like reality TV. See you Friday. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

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