Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 37
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.
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. 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.
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.
But the most shocking blow landed at One Police Plaza. In a statement to CNN on Sunday, Adams’s top spokesperson touted the administration’s record on public safety and affordability, and suggested New Yorkers were not paying close attention to the investigations.
While the spate of aggressive investigative maneuvers sent shockwaves through political and law enforcement circles, Adams has not been charged with any crime. That decision will ultimately come down to the discretion of Williams’s office, compounding the pressure on the prosecutor as he seeks to navigate a fraught moment – with the presidential election less than two months away.
One former top aide to top prosecutors in New York told CNN that Williams, “a very thoughtful, considered guy,” is conscious of the stakes – both in this election cycle and the broader sweep of city history.
Source: CNN
