TaMara

@CNN  New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is unraveling.

Late Saturday night, the mayor abruptly announced the resignation of his top lawyer and most ardent public defender. Days earlier, his police commissioner stepped down under pressure as a quartet of federal probes targeting numerous members of Adams’s inner circle hits a boil.

The stunning departure of chief counsel Lisa Zornberg, a former federal prosecutor, opened up a new and troubling chapter in the political and legal crisis now gripping City Hall.

“I am tendering my resignation, effective today,” Zornberg wrote in a short letter, “as I have concluded that I can no longer effectively serve in my position.” Adams in a statement thanked her and said he would name a temporary replacement in the coming days.

“These are hard jobs and we don’t expect anyone to stay in them forever,” Adams added in a bid to downplay the remarkable nature of Zornberg’s decision.

Related articleFederal investigators seized phones at the homes of several top aides to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, according to sources

Adams has been fending off allegations that corruption and malfeasance permeate the highest ranks of his administration for months, first stemming from an active federal investigation into corruption and illegal campaign donations linked to Turkey and foreign travel, according to a source familiar with the matter. Adams is now entering an already fraught 2025 re-election bid under the cloud of at least four separate federal investigations – a political and legal onslaught that New York Democrats broadly expect to ramp up in the coming weeks and months.

Adams has not been accused of any wrongdoing and the administration has said it will cooperate with all investigations.

Brian Blais, a former assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, spoke to CNN about the potential problems Adams could face.

“If campaign finance related charges are brought, or FARA (foreign agent registration act) charges relating to acting as an agent of the Turkish government, or bribery charges to the extent he was taking favorable actions in exchange for those campaign contributions, those are all serious charges, and those carry significant consequences,” said Blais.
“There’s at least some real degree of legal peril for the mayor.”

The growing probes – underscored by increasingly aggressive tactics from prosecutors, who stopped Adams on the street last year to seize his phone – also signal mounting political trouble for the retired police captain who outlasted a crowded field of Democrats in 2021 on his way to winning the city’s top job. Even before he was elected, Adams embraced the national media spotlight, declaring himself the “face of the new Democratic Party” and, after being invited to the White House, described himself as “the Biden of Brooklyn.”

But the luster quickly faded. First with Biden, after Adams publicly criticized the president’s handling of the border and a migrant crisis that hit hard in New York. The mayor’s reputation for enjoying the nightlife – at the expense, Adams’s critics say, of his day job – and repeated clashes over city spending, especially on education, dimmed his political star.

Adams’s political troubles, though, have been magnified and multiplied by the federal probes, which are picking up pace as the 2024 political season heats up.

Investigators in the Southern District of New York have been circling Adams and his administration for nearly a year. Last November, the mayor’s chief fundraiser was raided by FBI agents. Days later, Adams himself was presented with a federal search warrant for his electronics. That remarkable escalation by federal prosecutor Damian Williams was followed by a period of relative quiet until last week, when FBI officials issued search warrants and showed up at the homes of several Adams administration officials.   Read the entire article here.

I’m off to see clients. I’m sure there are other things to talk about, so Open Thread