The $10 Million Eric Adams Is Charged With Stealing Speaks to a Vaster Plot

Yves here. This post gives a good overview of the indictment made against New York City Mayor Eric Adams for bribery and campaign finance abuses. It clears up a point I must confess I got wrong in reading mainstream media coverage (and this piece suggests less-than-exacting write ups led others to reach similar conclusions).

My initial impression was that Adams had used donations from Turkiye to obtain $10 million in matching funds impermissibly. A New York City program provides $8 for every $1 donation (!!!) of under $250 made by a New York City resident.

I had assumed the match was only 1:1, not an astonishing 8:1. That provided a huge incentive to find a way to make big donations look like a bunch of small ones.

The other, even more important point is the nature of $10 million of these matching funds that Adams is charged with illegally obtaining. I had assumed, as it appears is common, that these matching funds were obtained in connection with donations from Turkiye sources, whether Turkiye proper or members of the Turkiye community in New York City. Recall that Adams is also charged with taking illegal gifts, particularly travel, from Turkiye sources.

It had struck me in passing that what I had assumed was $10 million in Turkiye-connected donations was an awful lot. It turns out that even with a better understanding, 1/8 that much from Turkiye friends is still quite a lot.

It turns out that the suit identifies only $26,000 in illegal Turkiye donations. Mind you, that’s still bad, but not even the $1.25 million many readers who understood the campaign finance laws might surmise.

In fact, the suit identifies only about $5,000 that Adams got via bogus small donors in connection with the Turkiye donations. But plaintiffs are allowed to plead facts that they expect to prove up in discovery.

So the DoJ believe that once it roots around in the campaign records and interviews the many members of Adam’s team that have been indicted or are being investigated, that it will shake loose evidence other, presumably many other, cooperative donor and mechanisms by which the Adams campaign broke up big donations and sent them through straws so as to get the matching funds. The indictment alleges that the scheme extended to (potentially many) US participants and that Adams was not just knowledgeable but also helped direct it.

By Alyssa Katz. Originally published at THE CITY on September 29, 2024

The grand jury indictment of Mayor Eric Adams kicks off with a stunning $10 million figure that has captured headlines, dominated cable news shows and prompted the New York Times editorial board to demand his immediate resignation.

That’s the sum Manhattan U.S. attorney Damian Williams alleges Adams improperly obtained “as a result of false certifications” that Adams and those working under him made about their compliance with campaign finance regulations. The campaign, the indictment alleges, knowingly accepted donations from overseas contributors smuggled in through American donors. They then applied for matching funds against some of this money, bilking the New York City taxpayer-funded program that supplies $8 for every $1 raised for city residents’ contributions up to $250.

Many readers of the grand jury indictment concluded that the Turkish donations at the core of the indictment yielded $10 million for Adams. But that figure is actually the entirety of the matching funds granted Adams’ 2021 campaign by the city Campaign Finance Board — more than the $8.9 million his campaign raised in private dollars.

How much did Adams actually get from Turkey?

The indictment lists about $26,000 in allegedly illegal foreign contributions, not counting matching funds the campaign sought — leading Adams attorney Alex Spiro to wave off the prosecution as “not a real case.”

But the small size of the donations doesn’t mean Adams is innocent of the serious charges, which implicate campaign aides and foreign donors as well. Williams’ focus on that total $10 million sum speaks to chillingly far-reaching implications of the Adams campaign’s abuse of the public financing system, which aren’t isolated to the Turkey incidents chronicled in this criminal case.

THE CITY found multiple instances of forbidden pass-through donations that were matched by public funds, where people listed in Adams’ campaign filings said they did not give and had no idea anyone had contributed using their identities. And a circle of Adams supporters have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a separate scheme.

So how much money did Adams actually get in matching funds from the Turkey donations?

Certain details are too scant to say for sure — but the dollars that can be traced in public records show an amount less than $5,000, across both the 2021 and 2025 campaigns.

New York City’s public matching funds program is considered a national model and has grown steadily more generous over the years. The 2021 election that Adams won was the first to have both an $8-to-$1 match (up from $6-to-$1 previously) and a $2,100 per-donor limit (down from $4,950), changes pressed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio following his own campaign fundraising scandals.

The program is designed to get big money out of local politics. The indictment alleges that the Adams campaign subverted that purpose by disguising donations from foreign nationals — who are forbidden by federal law to contribute at all — as small donations. Some of those the Adams campaign listed as coming from New Yorkers, which then unlocked public matching funds.

How far did the deception go?

Adams campaign representatives have previously pleaded ignorance when it comes to straw donations — where the actual source of the contributions is hidden from view and the campaign submitted the names of other people to the Campaign Finance Board.

Confronted earlier this year by THE CITY with evidence of straw donations in his reelection campaign, Adams’ election lawyer, Vito Pitta, asserted “it is fairly common for contributors to engage in straw donor actions without a campaign’s knowledge.”

Pitta added: “No one on the campaign has ever or would ever participate in or condone such behavior.”

Now the indictment alleges that Adams in fact not only knew that some funds came from Turkish sources, but approved of routing those donations through U.S. people to disguise them.

The full extent of the schemes may be unknowable. But the Turkey indictment documents Adams’ alleged personal knowledge and involvement in directing straw donations — raising the prospect that he may have been at least aware of other schemes as well.

How much was Adams personally involved?

The indictment lays out a vivid picture of how Adams and his aides allegedly made intentional efforts to obtain foreign contributions and straw donations, while attempting to cover their tracks.

It presents evidence of Adams personally directing an assistant, Rana Abbasova, to work with Turkish nationals who sought to funnel money to the Adams mayoral campaign even after being informed such donations would be illegal — and in one case attempting to solicit such a donation himself while traveling in Turkey.

According to the indictment, Adams also described the matching funds program to a Brooklyn businessman at a dinner with the Turkish consul general; the businessman proceeded to front $1,250 to 10 of his employees with instructions to make donations at an Adams fundraising party.

And in yet another alleged scheme, Adams approved of a plan to funnel contributions from a Turkish university president through straw donors in the U.S. Those donations, which came in after Adams was already the Democratic nominee, got refunded by the campaign.

Straw donations didn’t just come from Turks — or from foreign nationals. The indictment describes another scheme in which Adams campaign workers asked a local Uzbeki-American business leader for $10,000 and directed him to break it into five $2,000 donations to the 2021 Adams campaign, passed through employees. That leader then reimbursed the employees, according to the court filing — and later got assistance from Adams personally in getting clearance to proceed with construction after a safety violation.

Why didn’t the Campaign Finance Board stop this?

These contributions and many more apparent straw donations got past the city Campaign Finance Board, which issued the $10 million in matching funds but has yet to complete its audit of Adams’ 2021 campaign.

About 50 people work on enforcement at the board, which had to handle a record 500-plus candidates in the 2021 elections for City Council, comptroller, public advocate and mayor.

The board’s power to stop illegal exploitation is limited, especially where campaigns effectively cover up their actions. Its staff relies on representations from campaigns, and while they may refuse to give matching funds where paperwork does not show a donor qualifies, or even pull the plug entirely on public funding, cases can drag out for years. For example, a Queens City Council candidate served 18 months in federal prison for crimes tied to a 2010 straw donor scheme but was not thrown out of the matching funds program until this year.

In fact, the Campaign Finance Board first flagged the group of illegal Turkish university donations described in the indictment in October 2021 as coming from “suspected intermediaries.” The board asked the campaign then to explain who bundled the donations — information campaigns are required to provide routinely. But the Adams campaign consistently refused to identify intermediaries.

And it still hasn’t. A draft audit of the 2021 campaign issued by the board in May 2024 continues to seek answers to the same question.

In the meantime, the Williams indictment provided a devastating answer.

Could there be even more illegal contributions to the Adams campaigns?

Yes.

Adams’ 2021 filings to the Campaign Finance Board were rife with questionable fundraising claims, including phony addresses, groups of co-workers making identically sized donations and widespread use of money orders instead of typical credit card contributions.

The campaign also did not disclose most of the intermediaries who supplied groups of donations — claiming, citing rule technicalities, that it was not required to do so.