Mayor Adams, who will appear in court Wednesday morning, is pushing back against his federal indictment with furious motions as the corruption charges begin to show first signs of weaknesses. On Tuesday his defense attorney, Alex Spiro, accused the government of leaking “sensitive information” to the press. This comes one day after he filed a motion to dismiss one of the five charges. The presiding federal judge, Dale Ho, will hear arguments at the district court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday. 

“Since at least November 2023,” Mr. Spiro fumed in his motion on Tuesday, “The New York Times and other prominent news outlets have published a series of articles detailing the grand jury investigation that ultimately led to Mayor Adams’s indictment on September 26, 2024.” 

He referred to these alleged leaks as “serious misconduct”, which are “likely criminal.” Such leaks, according to Mr. Spiro, taint public opinion and ultimately the perceptions by jurors, especially those of the grand jury who voted to indict the mayor. Mr. Spiro is therefore asking the court “to intervene to protect the Mayor’s pretrial and trial rights,” and hold an evidentiary hearing on the matter. 

“By the time that charges against Mayor Adams were unsealed on September 26, 2024, most of the details of the indictment and the evidence underpinning the government’s case (weak as it is) had already been widely reported in the national and local press,” Mr. Spiro wrote. 

The Times pushed back on the allegations that it published sensitive information in an article published on Tuesday, writing that it has simply reported facts, such as when the FBI seized Mr. Adams’s cellphones, or when the Times reported that the federal government was investigating whether or not the mayor had aided the Turkish government in return for lavish travel perks. 

Mr. Spiro seemed most enraged that the Times reported the indictment before the mayor’s staff was notified.     

“Most egregiously, on September 25 — before the indictment was unsealed and even before the mayor’s counsel was notified of the indictment — the New York Times reported that the mayor ‘has been indicted in a federal corruption investigation, people with knowledge of the matter said,’” Mr. Spiro wrote. 

The Times acknowledged that it reported the indictment the night before it was officially unsealed. A spokesman for the Times, Charlie Stadtlander, said on Tuesday that journalists “conducted tireless and original reporting to uncover important new revelations about the allegations made against the mayor and his associates.”

On Friday, Mr. Adams became the first sitting mayor in New York City’s history to be arraigned in federal court, where he pleaded not guilty to charges alleging that he accepted travel perks, such as airline ticket upgrades and luxury hotel rooms worth more than $100,000, and “straw donor” campaign contributions from individuals connected to Turkey and the New York City Turkish community. 

The five count indictment lists four main offenses, conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting, accepting, and receiving campaign contributions from a foreign national, and bribery.

On Monday, Mr. Spiro filed a motion to dismiss the bribery charge, writing in his preliminary statement that the indictment does not “meet the definition of bribery and indeed does not amount to a federal crime at all.” 

The allegation, Mr. Spiro found, does not state that Mr. Adams actually agreed to perform any “official act at the time that he received a benefit.” 

Mr. Spiro wrote that when Mr. Adams allegedly accepted gifts from the Turkish government in return for facilitating the opening of their new Turkish consulate in a building near the United Nations headquarters at Manhattan, that he was not the mayor of New York yet.  

The indictment merely states, his defense attorney argued, that “while serving as Brooklyn Borough President—not Mayor, or even Mayor-elect—he agreed generally to assist with the ‘operation’ or ‘regulation’ of a Turkish Consulate building in Manhattan, where he had no authority whatsoever, in exchange for travel benefits…”

And after he was elected, Mr. Spiro found, and did help a Turkish official, who told him, as the indictment alleges, that “it was his turn to repay”, by fast-tracking a required building approval by the New York City Fire Department for the new 36-story Turkish consulate needed in time for a visit by the president of Turkey, his acts were “normal and perfectly lawful” and not criminal.   

“That extraordinarily vague allegation encompasses a wide array of normal and perfectly lawful acts that any City official would undertake for the consulate of an important foreign nation,” the defense attorney, whose high-profile clients have included Elon Musk and Alec Baldwin, wrote. 

“The three innocuous messages Adams allegedly sent to the Fire Commissioner here fall far short of the kind official act necessary for bribery,” Mr. Spiro argued. He added that the indictment “conspicuously does not allege” that his client “agreed ex ante to take that specific action in exchange for the travel benefits that he received.” In simpler words, the indictment does not cite any kind of agreement between Mayor Adams and the Turkish government, in which the mayor promised to help with the consulate in return for staying in luxury hotel rooms. However, if such an agreement did in fact exist, it could have easily been a verbal one, signed by a handshake without a paper trail.         

After filing his dismissal motion on Monday, Mr. Spiro held a press conference where he described the gifts to Mr. Adams as “gratuities” and “courtesies to politicians” comparable to getting a good table in a restaurant and or having “his iced tea refilled.” Mr. Spiro found nothing unusual about these perks, saying, “That’s just what happens.”

Mr. Spiro also said that personal travel, including airline upgrades, do not need to be disclosed. “Personal travel is not required to be disclosed. The other thing not required to be disclosed are upgrades and things of that nature.” 

Federal prosecutors disagree. “As Adams’s prominence and power grew,” they wrote in their historic indictment, “his foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him, particularly when, in 2021, it became clear that Adams would become New York City’s mayor.” 

The indictment further accuses the mayor of stealing money from New York City’s generous public matching program to fund his electoral campaign in 2021. The $8-to-$1 matching system provides a candidate running for office with $8 dollars for every dollar raised by a New York City resident. 

“Adams and those working at his discretion,” the indictment alleges, “falsely certified” and accepted “straw-donations, relying on the concealed nature of these illegal contributions to falsely portray his campaigns as law-abiding.” By straw-donors, prosecutors refer to people who make donations with someone else’s money.  

After the indictment was unsealed, various news outlets mistakenly reported that Mr. Adams took more than $10 million dollars in illegal straw-donations from the city’s matching funds program. But a closer read of the indictment later showed that the wording in the charging document was misleading. 

“As a result of those false certifications,” the indictment reads, “Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign received more than $10,000,000 in public funds.” 

The key phrase here is “as a result of”. Mayor Adams is not being accused of stealing $10 million from the matching funds programs; instead the amount he allegedly took illegally plus the amount he raised legally left him with a total of $10 million for his 2021 campaign. 

“This isn’t a real case. Never was,” Mr. Spiro said at Monday’s press conference. In his motion to dismiss the bribery charge, he called the prosecutors “zealous” and described the other four charges as “equally meritless”. He blamed the “so-called ‘straw’ campaign donations” on an unnamed “self-interested staffer with an ax to grind,” and promised to reveal the truth “in the course of litigation.” 

The same day that Mr. Spiro filed his motion to dismiss, one of Mayor Adams’ closest aides, Timothy Pearson, a former NYPD inspector who oversaw city contracts for migrant shelters among other duties as part of a broad “public safety” portfolio,  resigned. Mr. Pearson, who is also fighting four sexual harassment lawsuits, and is being investigated on two other matters by the New York City Department of Investigation, is among several senior administration officials whose phones were seized by federal investigators. 

Judge Ho will hear arguments from both parties in court on Wednesday morning.