Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams pleaded not guilty Friday in a Manhattan courtroom after he was indicted by federal prosecutors on five federal charges allegedly connected to illegal contributions to his 2021 campaign.
New York federal prosecutors secured an indictment against Adams on Wednesday evening, almost a year after FBI agents had seized his electronic devices and raided his top fundraiser’s home in November 2023. Adams appeared in court before federal Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker, pleading his innocence, and was allowed to leave without posting bail, according to NBC News.
“He shall have no contact with any individual witnesses or others listed in the list to be provided by the government concerning the facts or circumstances as provided in the indictment,” Parker told the court.
Prosecutors are charging the Democratic mayor with one count of “conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals,” one count of wire fraud, two counts of soliciting a contribution by a foreign national and one count of bribery.
Outside of the courthouse, Adam’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, spoke to reporters, stating that they will be filing a motion to dismiss and slamming the case as not “real.”
“Second thing that happened in court today is that we let the court know that next week we’ll be filing a motion to dismiss. We expect these charges to be dismissed. You all remember the Brian Benjamin case, similar, shaky theory, that case was dismissed,” Spiro said. “Same prosecutors, same theory, but the spectacle of this — so exciting to them — that they wanted to bring another one of these cases. This case isn’t even a real case. This is the airline upgrade corruption case.”
Spiro continued to call out federal prosecutors’ use of an unnamed staffer’s testimony to build a “shaky” case against the Democratic mayor.
“When that staffer was first interviewed, that staffer said that Mayor Adams knew nothing about this. He was not involved in this, and that he is innocent. They have that information. They have not turned that over to us. They have not turned that over to you,” Spiro said.
Adam’s 57-page indictment was unsealed on Thursday by federal prosecutors, in which they claim for over a decade Adams allegedly “sought and accepted improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him.”
Adams’ next court appearance is scheduled for Wednesday, NBC reported.
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