The Case Against Eric Adams and Company: A Virtual Panel
The Case Against Eric Adams and Company: How Bad Is It Really and What Comes Next?
Tuesday, October 15th, 10 - 11:15 a.m.
With the federal investigations ongoing, the steady drumbeat of Adams administration resignations and new criminal allegations have continued. Where is this headed? How strong is the government's case against the mayor? What does the United States Attorney’s promise that the “investigation continues” mean? What are the implications for governance? And what does recent history teach us about the severity of the corruption charges?
In a virtual panel, Vital City and Columbia Journalism School (CJS) brought together leading experts on city government, public corruption and local politics to answer these and other big questions.
Introductory Remarks: Jelani Cobb joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016 and became Dean in 2022. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2015 and was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the American Journalism Project and the Board of Trustees of the New York Public Library. In 2023, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Dr. Cobb has a B.A. in English from Howard University and completed his M.A. and doctorate in American History at Rutgers University in 2003.
Moderator: Errol Louis is the political anchor of Spectrum News NY1, where he hosts Inside City Hall, a nightly prime-time show that focuses on New York politics. He is a Vital City contributing writer.
Panelists:
Stan Brezenoff is a longtime leading civil servant, formerly serving as First Deputy Mayor under Mayor Ed Koch and as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He also served in various leadership positions, including as Interim President and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals. Additionally Brezenoff served as Chair of the Board of Correction and President and CEO of Continuum Health Partners. Previously, Brezenoff worked at the Ford Foundation for 10 years and served as Commissioner of the NYC Department of Employment and Administrator of the NYC Human Resources Administration. Brezenoff was born in East New York, and majored in Philosophy at Brooklyn College.
Carrie H. Cohen, formerly an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the SDNY and Chief of the Public Integrity Bureau for the NYAG, is global co-chair of MoFo’s Investigations + White Collar Defense and State + Local Government Enforcement groups. Cohen represents corporations, boards, and c-suite executives in government-facing investigative and regulatory matters. At SDNY, Cohen obtained the first convictions of former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. At NYAG, she received the Louis J. Lefkowitz Memorial Award for outstanding service. Cohen is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she teaches Public Corruption and the Law.
Tom Robbins has covered political corruption as a journalist for four decades and is the investigative journalist in residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY since February 2011. Robbins has been a columnist and staff writer at the Village Voice, the New York Daily News and The New York Observer.
Basil Smikle has been a political strategist and policy advisor for 30 years with local, national, and international experience. Currently, he is a professor at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies and an MSNBC Political Analyst. In 2015, Smikle was appointed to serve as the executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. Smikle holds a PhD in politics and education and an MPA from Columbia University.
Event Transcript
Dean Cobb: And I'm very happy to welcome you here for this webinar, The Case Against Eric Adams and Company: How Bad Is It Really and What Comes Next? This is being presented by Vital City, and in conjunction with Columbia Journalism School, we are very happy to collaborate with Vital City on this. And just by way of introduction, before I hand the mic over to our moderator, Errol Louis, I just want to talk a little bit about Vital City and why we were so excited to collaborate on this and on hopefully many other things in the future. Many of you will know, but some of you may not know, Vital City is a civic journal and I feel a little awkward calling it that, a civic journal, because when we think of journals, I think we think of something that's a little bit more inert than what Vital City is.
Vital City is something that's very dynamic and very active, and I was fortunate enough to be able to collaborate with them personally for issue number three, the Power of Place, and it is really I think a model for a new type of examination of civic life and if I just run through a few of the themes of their issues, issue one, Gun Violence. Issue two was titled How We Live Together. Issue three that I participated in, the Power of Place, the indelible mark of neighborhoods. They've done issues on summertime, on drugs. How many people should New York City's jails hold? Fundamental questions about how we live in New York and some of the things that really the thinking that goes into understanding what are the best policies and the best prescriptions for us as residents of this great city.
So, Columbia Journalism School, these are all issues, every single one of them, issues that some student or one of our faculty members is interested in or has covered or is thinking of covering. So, we're just very excited anytime we have the opportunity to collaborate with Vital City and today is no exception. Many of you have seen... In fact, I would hazard to guess, most of you have seen these kinds of bulletin board charts now that alternately will list the numbers of people who are in the Adams administration who have resigned or the number of people who are under investigation or the overlap between those two groups of individuals. So, I'm going to leave it here and pass the mic to Errol Louis, who is an underappreciated gem in New York City political life. I am always angling for an invitation to Inside City Hall, the show he hosts on Spectrum New York One, and he's going to introduce our panelists. Errol, I'll leave it to you.
Errol Louis: Okay, thank you very much Dean Cobb and that invitation is on its way. When they call, you just say, "Yes."
DC: Okay.
EL: I'm very glad to be here. I'm pleased to be part of this conversation with a lot of people who I wanted to talk to anyway about these very topics. This is important not just for journalists and journalism students, but for anybody who cares about the city. We have a lot of material to cover as far as where we are, how we got here, what it all means and what comes next, and I'm going to give the abbreviated biography for all of our esteemed panelists. They all do a lot of stuff. Stan Brezenoff, a longtime leading civil servant. I knew him mostly as first deputy mayor under Ed Koch. That was back in the 1980s, and of course, also, he served as Executive Director of the Port Authority, the president, and CEO of New York Health and Hospitals. He's been the chair of the Board of Corrections, the president, and CEO of Continuum Health Partners and a whole lot more. Born in East New York, majored in philosophy at Brooklyn College. We are very glad to have him here.
Carrie Cohen was an assistant US attorney in the southern district and Chief of the Public Integrity Bureau for the New York Attorney General's Office. She does white collar defense now, as well as state and local government enforcement. She represents corporations, boards, and C-suite executives in government-facing investigative and regulatory matters, and knows a whole lot about this. Some of us remember she obtained the first conviction of former State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
Tom Robbins, my friend, has covered political corruption as a journalist for decades. More to come apparently, Tom. He's an Investigative Journalist in Residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and he has been a columnist and staff writer at the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, the New York Observer, et cetera, City Limits.
And then Basil Smikle, the last, but not least, has been a political strategist and policy advisor for 30 years. He's got local, national, and international experience, currently a professor at Columbia University. You've seen him on MSNBC as a political analyst, and he at one time was Executive Director of the New York State Democratic Party, got a PhD in politics and education, and an MPA from Columbia, and I am so glad to have all of you here.
Let's just jump right into it. I've got some questions for each of you, and I want to engage you a little bit, and then we can talk among ourselves, and then we'll begin taking questions at the top of the hour at 11:00.
Carrie, I wanted to start with you, and I'm sure you've heard this from a lot of other people, but journalists are curious too. How strong is the case against Eric Adams? When you assessed it... I know you may have heard a lot of different things, but when you read that indictment, you hear about the facts of the case as they've been reported. How strong is the case and what is the strategic logic of starting with the mayor as opposed to anybody else that might be involved?
Carrie H. Cohen: So, thanks for that question. It's great to be here with all of you. I have read your coverage of my cases when I was a prosecutor and read and watch the coverage now as a defense attorney at Morrison Foerster. So, it's really good to be here. Starting with the mayor, I think it's really important to understand that especially the Southern District of New York is going to start at the top to the extent they can. Clearly, there are many different branches to this investigation, and I'm sure we'll see more branches come out, but it's important, especially because of the timing of the primary in June, I think the office felt some pressure if they felt they had proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a crime, to charge it early. The voters have a right to know what the government knows, if the government actually believes that, again, that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
The strength of the case, I think there's been a lot written and said, and I'm sure many of the viewers have been following it — the Supreme Court has been particularly hostile to public corruption cases. Every case that has gone up to the Supreme Court on public corruption the past 10 years, the Supreme Court has, even though they didn't need to, taken cert on it and every single time has reversed convictions, jury convictions, convictions that were affirmed by the appellate court, and each time the Supreme Court has cut back on what the law allows in the public corruption space.
So, the Supreme Court basically has signaled to prosecutors that under our federal criminal laws, things that we think are unethical, things that we may dislike in our public officials are not necessarily federal crimes. So, unless it is a traditional bribe scheme, a this for that, cash on the hand for doing a core official act of government, so voting on legislation, appropriating state money, the Supreme Court is going to look very carefully at those convictions, and in every time that they have, they have overturned them and said, "This is politics as usual. The conduct here is not a bribe scheme. It's not a this for that."
In the Adams case, what you see is they charged it they have many different counts, but the bribe scheme count just for the listeners is what's based on it as opportunities arise. So, the theory is that Mayor Adams was given things of value in exchange for taking official act when those opportunities arose, and the opportunity that arose years later was the inspection of the Turkish Embassy. That is a still valid legal theory, but it has not been tested recently before the Supreme Court, and it's not the type of proximity and time that you see the Supreme Court signaling to prosecutors they want to see to be able to establish a bribe scheme under our federal criminal laws.
EL: Wow. Let me also ask you, Carrie, what is the deal with the seizure of phones as an investigative technique? I feel like I don't ever remember seeing this happening quite so often, and I'm thinking maybe this is just the nature of where things are. I certainly use my phone even just to get on the subway every day. Is this now a normal investigative technique?
CC: So, Errol, you hit the nail on the head on that one. We all use our phones for everything and it holds so much information about what we say, what we think, where we are, that seizing phones and looking at phones is really a core tool that law enforcement has to figure out what was happening in real time, who knew what, when. All that information is these days in our phones. So, phones are being seized in all types of investigations in every type of criminal case. I think here what you saw is you saw a very public seizure of phones. That is not always the case. Sometimes phones are turned over consensually. Sometimes, phones are subpoenaed by companies. For example, if you have a phone from your company, your company owns that phone.
The company does not have a Fifth Amendment right not to turn that phone over, and I think if you look back on a lot of different indictments in all different criminal cases, you see text messages. At trial, you hear, you see what people were saying in real time. The reason you're able to know that is because the phones were either consensually given over or seized at some time.
EL: And then I guess finally on that subject, does the warrant that a judge had to sign off on to allow the seizure of a phone, is it narrowly tailored or is all of the information on that phone up for grabs?
CC: No, a search warrant to seize and review a phone is obviously a very intrusive thing on a person's liberty. It is actually something that prosecutors can only ask a judge for if they've exhausted other avenues that are less intrusive and the search warrant is narrowly tailored to phone numbers, and there's a really long affidavit that accompanies any search warrant explaining why the government needs it, what else they've done that they can't get the information they can get off the phone, and then what they are allowed to search in that phone, which is not necessarily everything.
EL: Okay. Stan, let me ask you, what does it feel like being inside an administration that is getting hit with subpoenas and almost daily stories, serious charges being alleged, and during your era, of course, there were a lot of dramatic events, including a suicide of an elected official. When we on the outside are asking ourselves whether or not the Adams administration can continue to function as something approaching peak efficiency or at least acceptable efficiency, what's it like coming to work every day when this kind of stuff is swirling around?
Stan Brezenoff: The pressure is unbelievable. First, I don't think there's ever been anything including the 1980s Parking Violation Bureau scandal that has approached this in magnitude and scope. Just so many key aspects of the city, including the mayoralty, of course, but a number of critical agencies that require a strong leadership just to operate on an ordinary basis. The fact that you're in an atmosphere where you don't know what the next day is going to hold for you. The distraction doesn't begin to describe what it's like. Governing the City of New York, on an ordinary basis, is a considerable task and being diverted from it for anything has an impact. This is both unprecedented and I believe makes it almost impossible to follow up on important agenda items.
Look, the garbage is going to get picked up. The traffic control agents are going to be giving tickets. Teachers will be showing up to the school. That's our civil service. They'll continue to do their job, but the administration has an important agenda. The City of Yes, the building of housing, fashioning better solutions, approaches to dealing with homelessness and muggers, just to name a few, where you're going to see the impact not only in the upper levels of management and the leadership of agencies. The Adams administration was already approaching the first stage of what I call institutional lame duckism. We have term limits. So, when it appeared that he was going to be able to run perhaps even as the favorite for a second term, then he would've put off that built-in lame duck status as you come to the end of your term, but now he has to be seen as the ultimate lame duck.
It's going to be very hard to fill positions at high levels. It's going to be very hard to retain people, and it's going to be very hard to have the political capital even in dealing with the city council, or soon, the state legislature as they come into session to fashion a budget and defend it, because you're just not going to have the same currency that you had before, and the impact on morale is incalculable. I don't often recount personal stories with Ed Koch, but after the Queens Borough President Donald Manes committed suicide, Ed was... because his probity was, by the way, never questioned, which is a big difference. It was the borough presidents and some other aspects of the administration, but not the mayoralty, not the deputy mayor. So, at least there was a core.
But Ed asked me how I thought we could get through this, and I said, "We just have to govern hard every day, but you have to be able to govern," and I do question whether in this circumstance where City Hall is involved, where high level positions are being vacated forcefully, whether that solution of demonstrating to the public by your day-to-day governance and assuring the operation and administration of government that you can get there at this stage, and I think we'll know very soon. I don't think the mayor is going anywhere in the short term, but I do question whether lots of things that are really important, even important to the mayor, can be advanced.
EL: And Stan, I mean, there's been some talk about how when some of these upper positions are vacated, the mayor says, "Look, there's a long line of people who want to work for the City of New York." He's hearing from people. That's not going to be a problem. How would you assess that? And I don't mean people who were first deputies or deputy mayors and so forth, but the tier below, somebody who might want to pick up and leave Westchester or Cleveland or someplace to come to New York. Does this put a damper on that?
SB: Well, it does, I think in the first instance, and he's demonstrated that. There are good people within the government who might, so he scored a home run with Maria and those announcements and the police department, which is another place where there's a serious vacancy. Some people who were associated with the police department have been named as possibilities. Ben Tucker for example. So, there's a little bit of room there. It's not absolute, but in general, I do not believe it will be possible to recruit people from other positions elsewhere of high quality because of the uncertainty. It isn't necessarily a moral or an ethical judgment on the administration or acting as a judge and jury. Just looking at it from their own perspective. Yes, coming to the City of New York in a key position or even within the City of New York, certainly, it was dazzling for me, and I never turned down an assignment, but this is different. I think even I would've blinked hard at this.
EL: And finally, Stan, there was a lot of talk even initially about Governor Hochul and whether or not she should invoke this somewhat hypothetical power of the governor to remove the mayor or at least start down that road. Just refresh my memory. I don't remember that ever coming up even as speculation back in the 1980s.
SB: Yes. You're right, but there was speculation about what Cuomo might and the governor might do. Remember the rivalry that already existed between the two men, both of whom I worked for. So, there was, but not in this kind of... Again, because Ed himself was not the subject of direct inquiry or phone seizure or so on. So, it is a bit different, but I think in my own view, it's such a big step without any clear process because there's never been one to remove an elected official like a mayor. That's a big move and it seems clear to me that Hochul doesn't want any part of it if she can avoid it, and I think her applauding the steps that the mayor took in appointing these high-quality people like Maria seemed to me to be an opportunity for her to say, "Okay. Things are somewhat under control in this context," and avoid that kind of judgment call.
EL: Okay. Tom, let's talk about the reporting here. How do you assess this in the context of other municipal scandals that you have seen and covered? Is this worse? Is this different? Is this more of the same?
Tom Robbins: Well, I mean, it's interesting. In terms of the coverage... Maybe Stan would disagree with this, but my recollection in the mid-'80s was when the Donald Manes suicide happened and when we realized the extent of the problems that were not in City Hall, but emanating from City Hall that it caught the wider press flat-footed. People weren't familiar with thinking about that kind of corruption within high levels in the city. I was working at the Village Voice at the time and with guys like Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett, and as Stan knows, they never wasted a chance to be able to go after Ed Koch, but they never laid a glove on the mayor.
They never touched him, and certainly, the worst thing that you could say about the City Hall under Ed Koch was that he was somewhat blind to the loyalties that he chose with some of the political leaders like Meade Esposito and Stanley Friedman to whom he had given great power in terms of appointments, and he had not looked askance at some of the people who he might well have done so, guys like the transportation commissioner who came straight out of the clubhouse, and who then appointed lots of other patronage people who later ended up going to jail. So, this one is so much different as Stan just said, because of the fact that it is the mayor and it is the people immediately in the closest nexus of the mayor.
I listened very carefully to everything Carrie just said about the issues in the indictment and whatnot, but to me... I mean, we're on a forum here called Vital City. We're talking about the health of New York City. So, I look at it from a different sort of judgment as to whether guilt or innocence. I don't think it's a question of guilt or innocence. Eric Adams may well have a good case, as his lawyer says, to make in court against the specifics of these charges, but New York City has to ask whether or not this is the kind of leadership that it can afford at this point.
And as a reporter just looking at it, you can just see this thing spiraling out in so many different really important parts of this. The police department has had lots of corruption problems over the years, but in the midst of the municipal scandals of the 1980s, I don't think anybody ever raised questions at the highest level. There was certainly never anything said about a commissioner, and we've now seen one leave in shame because of basically apparently either what he was tolerating by his brother's performance or some relation to that. The Chancellor of Education, the other most important agency in the city, has been forced out of his job for reasons that we still don't completely understand, and that agency also was untarnished in the middle of the municipal scandal. So, I see this one just from a reporter's perspective as much more dire for the health of the city than the one we saw in the 1980s, and that one was pretty bad.
EL: At some point, Tom, we will probably do a self-assessment as an industry or at the tribe, I guess, closer to what we are as far as the numbers. Was some of this foreseeable? There are some elements. I went and looked back at an interview I did with Eric Adams about six months after he became borough president, and I'm pushing him on questions of why are you taking an 11-day trip to China and who paid for that trip and what's going on with that? But I don't know if... There's some elements of what's happening now that were not a mystery, things like that. The travel stuff was known. The friendship arch in Brooklyn that never got built, although Winnie Greco raised a bunch of money for it. But was there enough that we maybe should have started this narrative a little sooner?
TR: I think this was the most foreseeable scandal that I've seen in decades. I mean, everybody knew that he was appointing his friends, some of whom had already been accused of being co-conspirators in other federal corruption cases. Philip Banks. I don't understand exactly how you account for hiding gold in the safe of a police precinct when you're a police commander. I don't know whether or not the mayor ever asked him like, "What are you doing here?" I mean, so we all had big questions. I think it was a feeling. Once Eric Adams emerged as the likely winner of the primary, New Yorkers very much wanted to believe that he was going to be good for New York City. He was an ex-cop. He was a working-class Black guy out of Brooklyn and Southeast Queens. He was someone who had a lot of flair and almost Koch-like verve to him that he was bringing to the job that we hadn't seen in a long time.
So, I think people were looking past those problems somewhat when the final vote came around, but yeah, almost so many of the appointments that he made and so many of the decisions, and then the things that he would say that would just strike people as bizarre that we had no way of being able to challenge. He was chosen by God to be mayor. Okay. Well, that's an interesting... I'm glad that you had that personal communication with the Almighty, but are you saying therefore that like some pesky US attorney, that is someone you're not going to listen to?
We saw so many indications that this was possibly a train that was going to go off track. I think there was a lot of good reporting. I mean, we did some of that at the city last year when this stuff was percolating. To me, the root of this issue is campaign contributions. I don't know whether or not it will hold up as the most damning charge in the indictments, but Eric Adams started to go wrong, I think, when he turned to so many of these communities to try to pressure them and move them to give him the head start that made him the leading figure in the Democratic primary, the 2021 campaign, and I think we're going to find that much of that money came from problem donors, like those stuff we've already seen.
EL: Yeah, no, absolutely. We've even had some guilty pleas already, I think, in the Manhattan district attorney's investigation. Basil, let me bring you in here. The mayor is saying that he's being unfairly targeted because he's been critical of the Biden administration and also because he's Black. Now, more than one thing can be true at the same time, but how do you assess not just the substantive validity of that, but the political impact of it? Is it taking hold? Are people buying that story?
Basil Smikle: Well, a few things could be true. He has mentioned in the past that African-American leaders are covered differently. That is true historically. He has said that there's not enough diversity in newsrooms. That also could be true. I leave it to the experts to weigh in on that with more specificity, but I could imagine that that's also true. But when it comes to then blaming the administration for your trials and tribulations, one of the things that I've been very vocal about is that you cannot talk about Democrats weaponizing the Department of Justice because all that does is feed into the larger Trump narrative against Democrats in his cases, and I've been saying for a long time that when you start using those kinds of arguments, first of all, there's no evidence of that. Second of all, just from a raw political standpoint, you're going to give at a very crucial moment in the presidential cycle the opposition talking points to use against Democrats running in, for the party, very important parts of the state, which they have already done.
So, I think all along, he's been at odds. One can put it that way, to some extent, the governor, and the Biden administration where they initially saw eye to eye, particularly on issues related to crime. If you remember very early in the administration, it was a crime summit in New York City and then things went off the rails from there, particularly around the migrant crisis, but it's not a frustration that other mayors and leaders of other states didn't feel who were Democrats and had words for the administration on. It is typical for the mayor of New York City to be at odds with the governor. We saw that famously between de Blasio and Cuomo. It is not unusual for the City of New York to be at odds with the White House. New York is a very unique place. That's why being mayor is generally a dead-end job because it is so unique and the issues are so very specific.
So, I felt that the accusations against the Biden administration and Department of Justice were largely unfounded. I went on to say, and I have said that if they're clearly not thinking about him, otherwise he would've had a more significant role at the Democratic Convention just back in August. So, that relationship in and of itself, as we've all talked about relationships and the ability to govern the city, that's where I think the question... There's a really important question to be answered. Does the relationship that's now fractured between the mayor and the governor and the mayor and Washington D.C., how is that going to affect his ability to govern going forward? And the continued attacks against the federal government and the state are certainly not going to be helpful.
EL: Right. Right, and then I'd like your assessment of something that Stan said a couple of minutes ago where he said basically the mayor is a lame duck. I mean, the political class, I'm sure you can explain it better than I: for them. the post-Adams era has already begun, right? I mean, people are looking past this administration, making plans, writing checks, striking deals as we speak, I imagine.
BS: Well, he used the word political capital and I think a lot about that. Just for full disclosure, I ran a campaign of Ray McGuire who's running against Eric Adams in that 2021 cycle. If you remember, we were in the midst of COVID. I don't think the vaccine had come out just yet in terms of where we were. It was announced somewhere in December into January. So, much of the conversation was around getting the economy back up and running, and if you remember, the spike in crime, particularly the spike in anti-Semitic crimes and also crimes against Asian Americans really shifted the narrative back into this. We've got to bring crime down, which went right into Eric Adams' lap as a former police officer, police captain, and then he suddenly wrought a lot of the attention and the narrative of the race and the messaging turned to him. So, he did enter into the race. He did get to that point and win the race with a tremendous amount of political capital within, particularly in communities of color across the city.
But I also think about the difference between being able to operate the city and being able to implement your vision for the city, and I think the latter is what is going to be concerning for anyone that is looking at his future and the city's future. Yes, as was said before, the trains are going to run on time. God-willing, we get some snow this year, but not too much. The snow will get plowed and the garbage will be picked up, but if you are concerned about long-term efforts to reform policing, for example, that will come into question when we have multiple police commissioners. If you're concerned about City of Yes and any other type of long-term strategy, whether it's involving real estate or whether it's involving any budgetary items that he's going to negotiate with the state, that is going to come into question because will anybody really want to sit down and believe that what anyone, the mayor included says is going to happen will happen under his leadership?
So, I think this long-term challenge, this political capital is waning as the investigations deepen and widen over so many different people, whatever... for example, and full disclosure, I've known David Banks for 20-some-odd years back when he was principal for law, government, and justice if I remember correctly. So, this was a job as chancellor, he's looked toward his whole life. So, whatever vision he had is now not likely not going to be implemented. That's not to say that the schools are not going to run properly, but it's just to say for what New Yorkers elected Mayor Adams to do, outside of bringing crime down, that remains to be seen as his ability to govern day to day becomes more and more hampered.
EL: Carrie, I wanted to ask you about this accusation, this notion that orders out of Washington or preferences, suggestions even about how to proceed with prosecutions are something that we should be aware of. I mean, I've talked with Damian Williams and he basically gave what I think is the party line saying, essentially, "We are the sovereign district. We make our own decisions right here. It would be improper, and it does not happen that we get calls from Main Justice or from the White House." In your experience with these high-profile public integrity prosecutions you've done, what's the reality of that? How does that work?
CC: So, the reality is exactly as Damian Williams said. I think we saw this, if you recall, when Geoff Berman was the US Attorney at the Southern District of New York, there were attempts by then President Trump and his Department of Justice to interfere with investigations that that office had of the president or people related to the president, and you saw the pushback that came from that office with any attempt to direct or interfere in any way in any investigation by that office. I find it, there are ways to defend, and one should, and I'm a defense attorney and I defend my clients against the Department of Justice, against the Southern District of New York, and you defend on the facts if you have them. We haven't heard that from Mayor Adams.
You defend on the law if you have that. You can also defend if the line prosecutors have engaged in any prosecutorial misconduct, any Brady violations. We're seeing some of that of those accusations here, but I think what is really unfortunate here is the narrative that is being woven by the mayor that there is some conspiracy theory out there that main justice is coming after him for other sorts of reasons when those of us who operate in the criminal justice system, particularly in the Southern district of New York, know that that is complete bunk.
EL: Well, let me ask you about a related issue. I've seen this a couple of different times where the notion that sometimes you might be able to walk away from an impending indictment or prosecution simply by quitting. I basically heard that not that long ago from former Governor Patterson. I asked him, "How come you decided not to run for reelection?" He said, "Look, I thought I was going to get indicted and I thought it would take the heat off me if I just walked away from all of this, and I never regretted the decision." Is that a formal conversation? Is that an implied kind of a deal?
CC: No, there's no deal that struck. If prosecutors believe that they have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime is committed, it doesn't matter if the person is in office or out of office anymore. So, that is not a reality. I think you have seen the Southern District of New York. You think back not so far to Mayor de Blasio, and you saw them spend a lot of resources and a lot of effort on a very intense investigation and that particularly of the mayor and of certain people perhaps around the mayor of campaign finance, and you saw a declination, and you saw that Southern District of New York publicly told the populace that while they believed that the mayor had done things that they viewed as unethical or unsavory, they did not rise to the level of a federal crime and they declined to prosecute.
I was interested, Tom, in your discussions of where's the populace and how did we get here when you were coming off of a Mayor Blasio administration that was racked with a ongoing investigation while he was the mayor, and then there were signs and there were people around the current mayor that this is not surprising that we ended up here, but I think it is surprising coming from the fact that we were coming off of a mayor that was under investigation for a large part of his term.
EL: Yeah, and Stan, it comes to setting the standard, we've heard this mayor say over and over again, "Hey, I keep telling my staff to follow the law, follow the law." It has long since to me at least started to sound more like an alibi than an ethical standard, but yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, what did you hear from Ed Koch? What was the conversation like pre-scandal about how people were supposed to conduct themselves, whether you needed to be above reproach or even the idea of reproach or accusation?
SB: So, I think that's one of the really negative hallmarks of the current administration. The level of tolerance for what you might describe as... Well, without a value judgment, small-time chiseling and inappropriate behavior, senior police officers who interfere in arrests in favor of particular police officers, or arguments about efforts to get backhanders of some kind, which are clear to the whole world and somehow don't rise to any sort of angered response or directed response from City Hall or City Hall's agents. That's a complete contrast to frankly every administration I have ever known until this, unless you go back to the Beam administration when it was an entirely different approach to governance.
So, I think this administration unfortunately stands out in a negative way in its willingness to tolerate loose ethical standards in a variety of places when there are many ways to get the message out that it won't be tolerated. This is not going to be tolerated. This is your job. You sexually harass someone, you're out. You get involved in some contractual relationship, even if it's just the appearance of it, you're out. That does not characterize this administration in any way. Just as it was noted that the Deputy Mayor for Law and Justice was himself named as a co-conspirator. What more of a clear message can you have? I think someone said this. I don't know if the laws were broken, but the overall behavior and the individual instances in this administration are an ethical insult to the City of New York.
EL: Well, yeah. I mean, I imagine you have fired a few people here and there over the decades. Was that something you felt empowered to do on your own?
SB: Yes, though I would tell the mayor, and obviously, the further up it went, it was collaborative. I will tell you, Ed didn't like the act of... He would fire, but he didn't like the act of firing. I did it at early morning breakfast.
EL: Okay, fair enough. Tom, one of the emerging themes here, and I see it as a note here in the chat as well, that we have this somewhat unique situation where there's a scandal at City Hall and there are issues to say the least and very likely an all-out scandal over at 1 Police Plaza as well, and some of this is, I read it as, the NYPD culture, having travel across the plaza and into City Hall where there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the NYPD that in almost any other setting would be considered deeply, deeply problematic. Is that some of what's going on here? And how do we cover a police thing that's going on at the same time as this political scandal?
TR: I think that is exactly part of the problem is that it's almost like the infamous blue wall of silence was brought into City Hall, the undying loyalty, the stick by your people who worked with you on the job no matter what they may have done. I mean, it's been appalling to see what the now former Commissioner Edward Caban did in terms of overturning virtually all of the disciplinary cases that he was faced with in his last months on the job. It was like, "We're not going to do this anymore. We're not going to punish cops for doing things that we can see something that's there, but for the grace of God go on," and that seems to be the thinking and that does seem to have carried into Eric Adams' view of the job. We heard him say over and over again that he believed in second chances, and I do, too.
I believe in second chances, but I believe that people have to earn it and they have to show a degree of interest in trying to display integrity in the job and that didn't seem to be the standard in the Adams administration. It was more like, "I like this guy. I worked with him. I know him, and therefore I'm going to trust that he's put it behind him," and some of the people who he said that about are already gone. It's Reverend Whitehead. There's others that we now know were a bad choice. So, yeah, no, and the other piece of this, Errol, which is we'll probably find out down the road a bit is what has this been doing to morale among the police force? I mean, we saw this in a really bad series of corruption scandals from when police people on the beats thought that there was a tolerance for going, "Don't worry about taking that cup of coffee. Don't worry about taking that free lunch."
If they see it happening up there, right? I mean, I think we have to wonder what the messages that's been sent over the last year or so from the top ranks both of 1 Police Plaza and from City Hall, and I worry about that.
EL: Yeah, it's interesting. I noted with great interest that Frank Serpico himself had been weighing in on some of these stories on social media, where everything old is new again. So, Basil, let's talk a little bit about some of the politics. We've got a bunch of people who are running, but in theory, the way it works is that if there is a resignation, depending on when it happens, but assuming it happens sometime in the next few months, the law, the charter calls for the public advocate to declare a special election date with somewhere between 60 and 90 days after that, and that has attracted a lot of people into this who might not have otherwise considered it, right? Because it's a chance to become mayor, but it's a 90-day sprint. You don't have to leave your current job, and you can check something off your bucket list. Are we going to see a lot of people running for this office?
BS: Yeah, I think with respect to the special election, I'm sure you're going to see a lot of folks running. It's nonpartisan if I remember correctly and so-
EL: That is correct.
BS: ... I'm sure you're going to see a lot of names. There are already a lot of names being declared or that folks are considering, but of course, special elections tend to favor people with the most name recognition, and of course, the most money. So, you can imagine why someone like Andrew Cuomo would be interested in closely watching what's happening right now and what the potential for a special election. You do not want to push this to a primary because then that has different rules and favors different types of candidates, but yes. One of the things that also factors into this is whether or not the mayor... If he's not removed, will he actually stay in, and my guess is for him, there is no real reason to come out at this point. So, if he stays in and we do go to a primary, is there a clear alternative to him? If you have, say, multiple folks running as progressive leaders, that raises some issues.
Is there someone like a Zellnor Myrie who says... Well, not someone like, but Zellnor Myrie who says he's running as a progressive, but he's actually focused more on governance and management? Is that going to present a clear alternative to this mayor? And what is to be done of the political capital within his communities that care for him? That remains because even though the polling has said, and this is going to be the case for a lot of the candidates if there is a special election. Even though there's polling to suggest that most New Yorkers want to see someone different, want to see them step down, getting someone to vote for an alternative is still another step. So, as a candidate in a special election, how do you go to his constituents or his core, his base and make them feel like they should support you, but not believe that the mayor... their power was usurped by the removal of this mayor or forcing him to step down?
In other words, if he's forced to step down, or if he's taken out by the governor or steps down from all kinds of pressure, there are going to be some people who are going to be upset about that, and they're going to be people who feel that, who are already skeptical of law enforcement and the media, that feel that he was pushed out prematurely and someone is going to have to go back to those voters and say, "As upset as you might be, consider me as a good alternative," and that's going to be a difficult challenge for that person.
EL: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I spoke last night in fact with John Catsimatidis who ran as a Republican candidate back in 2013, the billionaire business owner, and he's thinking about running, and for all of these people, I'm talking to Brad Lander tonight, how they move forward really depends on what they think or what they want to argue went wrong, right?
BS: Mm-hmm.
EL: So, how does that work, Basil? If you're a candidate, I guess in a generic sense, coming in behind somebody who had ethical problems, do you specifically have to make that part of your argument? Or can you just say, "Look, that person's gone. Let's go in a different direction based on this set of five ideas that I've been arguing for?"
BS: Well, I mean, it's not hypothetical at all when you think about what Kathy Hochul had to do in stepping into that role and saying clearly that she wanted to go in a different direction, not just in terms of policies to protect women in the office and protect women in the state broadly, but there was an attempt to just govern differently and have a different relationship with the state legislature. There are a lot of folks that may feel that even if they missed certain aspects of Andrew Cuomo's leadership, there are things about his leadership that they really liked and would want to keep and that certainly resonates with the voter also.
There was a sense that when... because if you remember when Cuomo ran in 2010, he ran to be the grownup in the room and maybe that's how someone has to run from mayor against Eric Adams, or if he would've stepped down in a special election, who's going to be the grownup in the room? Who's going to make sure that everything is run carefully, safely, and on time, and everything that needs to get picked up is picked up? Everything that needs to be plowed gets plowed, and maybe it's something that is away from ideology and more towards management, and how do I know that that's even something on the mind of a voter? Well, you look at the fact that Kathryn Garcia came in second and she campaigned as someone who wanted to be a good manager of the city's bureaucracy.
So, I think there's an appetite for less ideology, more raw management of city services. I've always said that the only ideology that New Yorkers care about is a pro New York ideology. We don't want you going off and trying to be something else somewhere else. We want you to stay and focus on us, and I think that's how someone would approach the role. Now does that mean that you can't have a more progressive lean, that you could look to the left and think that there are major areas of city governments that need reforming like policing? Absolutely, but you have to do it in a way that you can convince New Yorkers that they'll still be safe, and I think Mayor Adams wanted to do that and try to do that. "I can govern and bring crime down, but also do it more humanely and have an eye toward communities and constituencies that have previously been harmed by more aggressive policing."
He did try to do that, but then you've also got to not do this stuff that gets you indicted. So, I think the governance part is something that New Yorkers really do cling to, and that's how I think the next... whoever's campaigning, that's what they need to focus a lot on.
EL: Okay. We've got some questions here in the Q&A and in the chat. I'll pick up those that I can, and I'll invite panel members to just jump in, just start talking after you want to answer them. This is a very well-formed and lyrical question from Luciana Chavez. Adams was baptized with tears from the blind eyes of the business community. He was given power to run the most vital city in the world at a time when big businesses saw themselves as the solution to New York City's return from the pandemic. Does anyone from the panel see these indictments as a risk to business interest groups, like the partnership for New York City as a responsible party in these indictments? If Adams is found guilty, could this case unravel a deep-seated culture of corruption in past administrations? So, a couple of different questions there, but let's tackle the one about where does business come out in all of this as far as both what they want and whether or not they had any direct or indirect responsibility for where we are now. Anybody?
CC: I mean, I'll take a shot at it in that, businesses, in some ways, when an indictment comes out like this, they try to stay far away. I mean, there's a lot of companies doing business with the city, millions, billions of dollars, changing hands, but the businesses are trying to stay as far away from any facts of this case as they can, and here are this indictments’ primary concerns, primarily the Turkish government, Turkish Airlines, foreign investments. That's not something I don't think that the public is used to seeing. Why is there so much foreign interest in the mayor and in our government? And I think you've seen some other elected officials come out and say, "I was asked to go on a trip or be wine to dine, and I just had a blanket no, because I don't see how that helps me lead the city. I don't see how that helps the people of this city."
EL: And by the way, you mentioned that the Supreme Court has been redefining what is or is not bribery, extortion, undue influence, pay to play and so forth. It almost seems like there's this evolving standard. We're going to see more of what is being alleged in this indictment that people will give money, favors will be done, and officials will be justified almost in saying, "Well, let's take it to court," but there's no clear line.
CC: I mean, that is certainly the supreme Court's concern, and it is a serious concern when you are a sitting individual. Where is the law? I need to know what the law is. I'm entitled to my due process. I need to understand what conduct violates law and what is just politics as usual. So, I think what the Supreme Court has been trying to do is try to move that line and they've even said in some of their decisions, "We see what happened here. Gift giving is just politics as usual. We see calling up constituent services as politics as usual. We see asking someone in your administration to take a meeting with a lobbyist or someone that donates to my campaign. That is how our political system is run, and we are not going to criminalize in the federal system that behavior."
EL: Here's a question from Margaret Sullivan. How well has the press done in telling the public what this is all about? It's been very hard from my point of view as a New York resident to understand what the charges really are. Just tons of people resigning, phones seized, but lack of clarity. Are we too deep in the weeds? I'll ask you. What do you think of that, Tom?
TR: I think it's probably a reasonable concern from someone, a New Yorker, trying to figure out what this is all about because there has been so much. I mean, I think that comes with a territory when you've got a spiraling scandal that's going off in so many different directions and all of us in the business of trying to report on it feel compelled to be able to first off, just let people know what the latest subpoena was for and who the characters are. The most recent criminal charge from the Southern District was against somebody I'd never heard of, a low level person or seemingly low level person in the Mayor's office of community liaison.
And I wouldn't expect New Yorkers to understand, "Well, what is this guy's problem? We just looked at the mayor and now we're looking at this guy." It becomes baffling, but I would suggest that there's been a fair amount of coverage that has tried to take a step back, some of it in columns, and some of it in other pieces to try to draw the big picture that there was an attitude of permissiveness. There was an attitude of pushing the envelope in terms of campaign contributions and that's what we're seeing unfold here, and we will see... I mean, I think Damian Williams in the Southern District has assured us that we're going to see additional charges sometime in the near future, and we're going to see additional defendants and that's going to make this picture, I think, somewhat clearer for New Yorkers trying to understand what went wrong in this City Hall.
BS: If I could just add very quickly, that also is politically what the mayor is, looking at it in some ways, counting on, that there's so much information out there that this web is quite complex, that it's really hard for a voter to assess how all of this affects their day-to-day lives. How does this affect me in my ability to go to work in the morning to earn money, to take care of my kids? And unless there is a way to direct, and this is what any opponent of his has to do, or anyone running if he steps down. Somebody's got to have to draw that line directly between those actions and why the day-to-day lives of New Yorkers are being somehow diminished or threatened or they're being disadvantaged in some significant way, and unless and until that happens, it's still going to be this amorphous thing that while maybe concerning still doesn't create the kind of urgency that would drive a voter to the polls.
EL: On that note, Basil, here's a question from Joe Bello. How does or could the Adams indictment hurt the house races? And by the house races, I assume he means these fiercely contested suburban races, the four to six or so where you have Republicans in districts that actually went for Joe Biden four years ago.
BS: Yeah, it was part of what I was saying earlier about the language that he has used in his own defense, meaning that he's talked about the Department of Justice being weaponized against him. Those were Trump talking points. He often uses Trump-sounding talking points in his defense. I always pay attention to language and messaging. If you listen to him, he uses language that makes him seem like he's the aggrieved. It's about him. It's not about us, and that can be construed as very Trumpian. So, I'm saying all that to say that if you consider the ways in which the Republicans and the GOP and the Long Island House races and the Upstate House races, how they often use New York City issues and to translate that into what's happening in the suburbs, this is not going to be any different.
Those talking points are going to be used against Democrats running in those districts. Trump himself from his rallies has even used the same... has referenced Eric Adams and used his language to say, "Look at what the Democrats are doing." So, it's going to be used as messaging against Democrats in those races and it's going to be hard for them, those Democrats to be able to pivot away from that. They're going to have to, but it's going to be harder for them to do that when their party's own words are being... The leader in their party's own words are being used against them.
EL: Okay. I got a question here for... I'll ask Stan to answer. This is from Michael who's got an optimistic take on some of this. As Adams' loyalists continue to be replaced by more nonpartisan bureaucrats, e.g. Maria Torres-Springer becoming First Deputy Mayor, is there a perception of possibility that the resulting power vacuum will afford an opportunity for those remaining in the administration to take advantage of the remaining time left to accomplish more than they previously would have otherwise?
SB: Where's Machiavelli when you need him? Hard to say, and I'm not that much a student of the Adams administration, but let me start out by saying Maria is not a bloodless bureaucrat. She herself is someone deeply committed to what I think could be described as progressive goals in housing and physical development and economic development. One can only hope that she's going to be in a position to advance the agendas that she's for. In those arenas, she has credibility. So, I certainly hope that she can. Look, the Adams administration has zeroed in on some very important issues, though I would note reform of the police department never seemed to be one of them, but in terms of housing, in terms of taking care of migrants and homelessness, a lot of good stuff that they've tried to advance. It's not easy to do with a lot of different kinds of vested interests in the city, and they seem to be making progress on that. One can only hope that they are able to continue to make advances in those arenas.
EL: Okay. This last question. I think we'll have time for this one more, and I think Carrie's probably the right one to answer. This is from Charles. What are the implications and next steps with respect to the mayor's refusal to give prosecutors his phone password? I remember this was a big deal a few years ago, the fact that Apple passwords are just uncrackable. The company has created no back doors for prosecutors. What happens there?
CC: So, you totally remember that correctly. There was actually a case at the Second Circuit against Apple, and Apple was saying to the government, "We will not share our technology," because Apple, of course, knows how to get into your phone. "We will not share our technology with you, law enforcement. If the person who has the phone won't give you up the password, don't turn to us," and there were a whole bunch of Apple phones actually being in a storage unit at the NYPD that NYPD just couldn't get access to at the time. What happened was that the FBI figured out a workaround, and they have not revealed what, of course, but for most phones, they actually have a workaround and they can now get into the phone. So, while that case was pending, the technology and the FBI stepped it up and figured out how to get in the phone. Adams' statement that he changed his password a day before and now forgot it. You could talk about how that plays out in the world of public opinion, but I'm confident it's not going to hinder prosecutors' ability to get to that phone.
EL: In public opinion, it's preposterous. Could that end up before a jury? Would a jury be allowed to hear that, that this is the story he gave us?
CC: Yeah. I mean, hopefully, he gave it through his lawyers. So, it cannot be used against him. Of course, the defendant has a Fifth Amendment right, not to incriminate himself. There's an act of production privilege with what's on your phone because it's your communications as an individual. So, that Fifth Amendment will probably prevent any use by the government of his failure, although it is out there in the public. So, that is an interesting legal issue for those of us that ponder those things.
EL: Yeah, absolutely. You know what? I do have time for one more. There's someone pointing out here, Tom, that there's a question on the table that this administration was wrestling with at least about whether or not there'll be a federal receiver to take over the jails, and it's right on point because I moderated a panel right here for Vital City where that very question was explored in great detail. Is that question, I guess by definition, that question is going to be on hold until this issue is resolved and/or this administration leaves?
TR: Oh, I'm not sure. I mean, it would seem to me... I mean, we're talking about the same sovereign district of New York here, which went in and recommended that Rikers needed outside monitoring in the first place. So, if they were looking to press their argument and be able to persuade the judge that this really is a time where there just isn't anybody home anymore at City Hall, and at the meantime, I mean, people like Graham Rayman at the Daily News are still telling us stories about tragedies that are taking place on Rikers day to day. This would be an opportunity to be able to press that issue.
I mean, City Hall, it was one of Eric Adams's most bizarre, just AWOL stances that the fact that he could never bring himself to say what he wanted to do with Rikers and how it should be run. I mean, he was very close, we know, to the former leadership of the union there, and he certainly acted like he didn't want to take control of the situation, which on some level is understandable, but at the same time, like it's an ongoing tragedy. So, I would see this as an opportunity if people wanted to press it, because as I say, there's nobody home in City Hall to be able to answer this right now. There is no deputy mayor for public safety. You know?
EL: Right. Right. No, very true. Very true. Listen, folks, that brings us to the end of our time. I want to really thank all of you, Carrie and Stan and Tom and Basil for walking us and me through some really, really important issues. There's going to be a lot more to say about this and a lot more reporting, but Vital City, as always, I think gets the job done with some really smart talk and some real important avenues that we'll follow in the future. So, let me say thanks to all of you and to Dean Cobb and the Columbia J School, and we'll wish you all a good rest of the day.