Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Indictment Unsealed Against Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City, NY); New York City Mayor Accused of Taking Money from Turkish Donors; New York City Mayor Speaks After Being Indicted. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired September 26, 2024 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: They are furious inside the mayor's administration right now.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So, Jim, sometimes when you have a pending investigation like this, it will be open lines of communication and more or less open lines of trust between prosecution and defense lawyers, and sometimes you don't have that. And this seems to be the latter scenario.

Prosecutors always have to sort of find that sweet spot between on the one hand, you don't want to be heavy-handed, you don't want to take unnecessary measures that may trample on someone's rights or just be basically disrespectful to a person. On the other hand, as a prosecutor, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And it's unpleasant and sometimes you have to execute a search warrant or not give somebody an opportunity to delay or take more time.

So, I think that has yet to play out, but it is clear, Jim, as you said, there is some bad blood here between the respective sides and there's a P.R. battle going on. I mean, Eric Adams made statements last night. Apparently, he's going to speak again. He is going to try to get in before the U.S. attorney speaks at 11:30. Eric Adams we know is not shy about what he says on camera.

It's worth noting the U.S. attorney, who again we'll speak in about a half hour, he is constrained as to what he can say. I think when we see his press conference, we've seen them recently. We saw one, two weeks ago on the Sean Combs, the Diddy case.

The U.S. attorney can only say essentially what's already in this indictment. Now, it's a 50-some page indictment. It's very detailed. So, he will have some material to work with here. But, yes, Eric Adams -- I believe Eric Adams will continue to make his case in the press and to declare his innocence. And he is presumed innocent.

ACOSTA: Yes, Eric Adams trying to beat the feds to the punch here in just a few moments. Stand by for that, Elie. And, everybody, thanks so much.

I want to turn it over to my colleague, Pamela Brown, who is also in the CNN Newsroom. It's a busy morning today, Pamela. PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Incredibly busy. The fact that you have the New York Mayor, New York City Mayor charged with five federal public corruption charges, very significant, Jim. Thank you for that.

Let's continue our breaking news coverage of this indictment against New York City Mayor Eric Adams with Shimon, Gloria, and Elie. And just reading through this indictment, Elie, I mean, this is not a barebones indictment. I mean, there is a lot of detail in here. I'm still reading through it. But these charges are very significant against the mayor.

HONIG: Yes, Pam. Sometimes when you see a federal indictment, it will just basically track the language of the statute from the law book. It doesn't give you any detail. This indictment is not that. This indictment has 50 some pages of detail.

If I can try to boil it down to its essence, it's that Eric Adams received benefits free and sometimes discounted luxury travel from Turkish interests, and in exchange for that, he took steps as mayor to benefit those interests. So, that's the gist of it.

And you mentioned before that this is a five-count indictment. So, let me just break that down. Count one charges Eric Adams with a conspiracy, meaning just he agreed with at least one other person in order to commit various crimes. Those underlying crimes are wire fraud for federal program bribery and then receiving illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals. So, just to break those down. Count two is then the actual crime of wire fraud, meaning they used the wires, the internet, the phones to commit some sort of fraud. Counts three and four then are different, essentially bribery counts, charging that, again, in exchange for these benefits, he took action. And then count five relates to him taking action on behalf of these Turkish foreign nationals.

Now, to be clear, you are not allowed as an American candidate for office to take campaign contributions from a foreign national or foreign interest. So, that's charged in this indictment as well. So, again, it's a conspiracy charge. And then that breaks down into mail, into wire fraud, bribery and taking illegal donations from foreign sources.

BROWN: And it struck me and reading through this indictment, just how far back it goes, right, starting before he even ran for mayor.

Shimon, to bring you in on this, and also the search warrant that was executed this morning, it's unusual, right, for a search warrant to be executed right after an indictment comes down. The feds were there at Gracie Mansion for hours today. Certainly, the mayor's lawyer was not too happy about this and said he would have happily turned over whatever they were looking for.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, this really set off the legal team this morning because they were not expecting that. You know, they were not told they claim that this indictment was coming. They were never given any information before it started leaking. They were not given a heads up that this indictment was going to be unsealed today.

And then this morning, what happens is at 6:00 in the morning, which is customary for the FBI around the time that they do these kinds of things, they went to Gracie Mansion. I mean, this is the official reporting. residents of any mayor while they are serving in this city. It's on the Upper East Side. It's a sprawling complex. You know, it's massive. The FBI appeared there at 6:00 A.M.

[11:05:00]

Keep in mind, there is a police detail. There are NYPD officers stationed all around the mansion.

So, the FBI arrived there this morning. They spoke with the police security there, the NYPD. And then they went onto the property. And we're told is that they were executing a search warrant. They served him with a summons and they also took his phone.

And this is not the first time that the FBI has taken the mayor's phone. Remember, it was about a year ago when he was leaving an event, a very aggressive move by the FBI. They approached him, they took him into his police detail SUV, and that is when they took devices from him. And, of course, that set off events, and that really pissed off many of the people close to the mayor. And then again this morning, they do that again and his legal team is just sort of frustrated trying to figure out why the FBI was being so aggressive yet again. We don't know and they may have very good reason for it and they're not going to tell us, obviously.

And so the other thing this indicates is that whatever reason they felt they needed to get in and get that phone again, they may have new information that they are concerned about that is contained on that device. And now that they have filed this indictment, they are clearly, clearly continuing their investigation into the mayor.

We know there are other investigations going on involving the mayor and the people close to the mayor. But as we saw from the mayor last night, he is defiant. He is ready for this battle. He says he's not resigning. His legal team says he has no -- you know, he has no expectation that he's going to resign or that he's going to be forced out, and that he's ready to fight.

And I think one of the things that's going to help his legal team -- and, look, this indictment is certainly devastating and it contains a lot of information, but just how far back this goes. You know, we're talking, you know, up to a decade or so how far back their allegations go of his involvement with Turkish officials and getting benefits, and certainly his campaign was benefiting from it.

But from what I've read so far in the indictment, I think this is important. It doesn't appear that at least in this indictment that there is any sort of other than campaign personal gain. There isn't any sort of money that he's getting, at least from what I can see, where he's using it for himself. This appears to be all about his campaign and campaign finance laws. And so we'll see. Look, a lot more is going on. There are a lot of many, many more investigations, as you know, Pam, and this could perhaps be the start of it. And so we'll wait to see what the mayor has to say here shortly and then also from the U.S. attorney, who's going to be speaking at around 11:30.

BROWN: Yes. And just to follow up on the point you're making, Shimon, the prosecutors do also allege though that in addition to those, what they say, what they allege are illegal campaign donations, that Adams and his companions received free or discounted travel on Turkey's national airline, and significant part by the Turkish government. And then they allege that in turn for these alleged, you know, benefits that they received that Mayor Adams in certain favors for the Turkish officials.

To bring you in, Gloria, I mean, as we await for Mayor Adams to speak, and as the Shimon laid out, he is saying he is innocent. He is finding this very defiant. What are the political implications here?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're massive. And the reason for that is because already in the past several days, not only it looks like the mayor's going up to the podium now.

BROWN: I'm going to interrupt you now, Gloria. We're going to hear from him.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D-NEW YORK CITY, NY): First of all, I want to thank you for being here this morning. And I want to thank the supporters of all, the groups that I hear, particularly the men and women of the clergy that's here that have joined me here today.

And we are not surprised. We expected this. This is not surprising to us at all. The actions that have unfolded over the last ten months, the leaks, the commentary, the demonizing, this did not surprise us that we reached this day. And I asked New Yorkers to wait to hear our defense before making any judgments.

In about 30 minutes, you're going to hear a story of the case that is in front of us. This story will come from the federal prosecutors. And I asked to wait in here outside to this narrative.

From here, my attorneys would take care of the case so I can take care of the city. My day-to-day will not change. I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do. And the 300,000-plus employees of our city government will continue to do their jobs because this is what we do as New Yorkers.

It's an assault to the hard work and pity people of the city that anyone would say that they won't do their jobs while this case proceeds in the background. They are dedicated public servant and I have been one of them for many years, and they're going to continue to do their job moving the city forward every day.

It's an unfortunate day and it's a painful day. But inside of all of that, it's a day where we will finally reveal why for ten months I have gone through this. And I look forward to defending myself and defending the people of this city, as I've done throughout my entire professional career.

I want to now turn it over to the person who started me on this journey, Reverend Herbert Daughtry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. You are our mayor, and will be to, time come, still will be our mayor. To all the supporters, irrespective of what people say, he's still our mayor.

BROWN: All right. So, we just heard Mayor Adam speak there in the wake of this indictment where he is facing five federal public corruption charges. He is vowing to fight. He's vowing to stay in the job. He called this an unfortunate and painful day.

Elie, Shimon, bringing you back. Elie, to start with you. What do you make of his comments?

HONIG: Well, a defiant tone from Mayor Adams, as we expected. He has every right to defend himself vigorously, and I think he will certainly do that. And it's interesting, I think, the way this is playing out. Eric Adams understands the press. He's a creature of the media. And he knows that Damian Williams, in 18 minutes, the U.S. attorney will be standing up and laying out the case. And so I think this was Eric Adams trying to undercut it.

He didn't get into any of the substantive allegations, but he is forcefully declaring that he believes in his innocence.

BROWN: All right, we're going to go back to him. He's taking questions right now.

ADAMS: When we finish speaking, we will respond to a few questions. You just want to cover that. Are you good, Robbie?

I affectionately called her Mother Dukes, has been ahead of the NWCP, and just a leader that has mentored me throughout my entire journey. I want to now call up Mother Hazel Dukes.

BROWN: Elie, it is interesting, as you were making your point, he did not take on the specific allegations head on and deny them, right? It was more broad, saying, soon, you're going to hear this narrative from the prosecutors. But, you know, I am here to fight and vow to stay on the job.

HONIG: Yes, I think it would be foolish for him to try to take on these allegations directly and explain them right now. If I was his defense lawyer, I would beg him not to do that. He has not done that.

And, Pam, now that we've had a little time to go through the indictment, the gist of it is as follows. So, essentially the indictment charges that Eric Adams and his campaign would accept contributions and other benefits, free discount, luxury travel from Turkish nationals and Turkish state actors.

And in exchange -- well, first of all, the way that those donations were sent to the Eric Adams campaign, according to the indictment, is through what we call straw donors, meaning through use of names of people who are not actually contributing the money in order to try to hide the fact that these donations were coming in. So, for example, if I was trying to donate to you and I was a foreign national, I would send it to you, to your campaign through the name of Shimon Prokupecz, to use an example.

[11:15:02]

So, the allegation here is that these Turkish nationals used straw donors to send money to Eric Adams. Eric Adams knew about that.

There's another allegation here of wire fraud, and the allegation is in -- New York City has a matching funds program, where if you're a candidate for office and you get certain donations, you can then receive taxpayer money to match those donations. And the allegation here is Eric Adams took these fraudulent donations and used them to get up to $10 million worth of taxpayer matching funds. So, that's another element of this case.

And then, finally, it is illegal for any American politician, federal -- it's a federal crime for an American candidate for office to receive or accept or solicit donations from any foreign, national or foreign interest. So, that's an overview of what this indictment lays out.

BROWN: What do you make -- is there any legal significance to what prosecutors alleged here that he didn't just accept these illegal contributions, but he also sought them?

HONIG: Absolutely. One of the elements of the crime here is what we call solicitation. He asked for them, he accepted them, he received them. I mean, prosecutors are definitely going to have to prove that Eric Adams, the defendant, knew what was happening here. If he was receiving illegal contributions and had no idea, did not know about it, had no way to know about it, that's not a crime.

And so, that's going to get to the core issue that I think will be disputed here, which is, what did Eric Adams know, what was his state of mind?

BROWN: And, Shimon, to bring you and I know you've been reading through this indictment too, we've been following this -- you have been following this case for many months, and we know that some of his aides have also been part of this investigation. Is there any indication that there are cooperators who have flipped those in the administration of Mayor Adams, who have flipped to help prosecutors with this investigation and bringing these five charges against him today?

PROKUPECZ: Hard to read that through everything that I've read so far. They do have a lot of information, right? The government was able to obtain text messages from various people that were involved in this. As they allege, they've been able to, it seems, talk to some people. So, it's hard to tell who exactly may be cooperating. Look, the Adams administration has said that they were cooperating in this investigation. There have been a lot of search warrants and subpoenas issued. So, it seems like they obviously actually have a lot to work with. I mean, remember, this goes back a decade. So, there was a lot of information.

And I think one of the key things in all of this also is the allegations about the role of the fire department here in New York and the expediting of the Turkish consulate. That's a very big deal, right? I mean, the fact that they're alleging that the mayor here, because of the influence that these Turkish officials had on him, they basically were able to get him to put pressure or to ask the fire department to do this, to expedite this.

The mayor will say, and he has said this previously, and people close to him have certainly said this, that perhaps this is just the normal course of doing business in this city. As someone who works for the people of New York City, as someone who is a politician in the city, this is all part of the course of doing business. Of course, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office do not see this.

They see this really, what's important, you know, just having covered these kinds of cases before going back to really, you know, the Mueller days when you and I both covered that, you know, this is a big concern for the government. Any time a foreign national can exert what they say is this kind of pressure and this kind of influence on a politician is very significant and very concerning. And it's also Turkey, and there's a lot of concern over that, certainly, for the government.

But when you read this indictment also, what's really interesting is that it's the years of influence, the years of working Eric Adams. And then when they need a favor, basically, what the government says is Adams does that favor for them. And that is certainly something that is extremely concerning for the government, for the FBI.

And you can understand why they would do this investigation and why they would bring this case. But for the Eric Adams team, they're going to certainly raise a lot of issues, Pam, with why all these years, this goes back a decade, what took so long? What finally caused them to go ahead and act on this? And perhaps they learned some information. To your point, maybe they got cooperators. There's a lot of questions here that I think we want answered. And at some point, hopefully, we'll get those answers.

BROWN: And to bring in Elie on that point, Shimon, you know, Elie, a bribery charge is a very serious charge, right?

[11:20:00]

It could be a charge that is hard to prove. But what Shimon just laid out with this idea of what prosecutors say in this indictment of Mayor Adams doing concrete action, taking concrete action for these Turkish officials who they say gave illegal contributions to his campaign, that kind of quid pro quo is what they're trying to establish to prove this bribery charge, right? HONIG: Well, that's exactly right, Pam. That's the way it's laid out in the indictment. I think we'll hear this from the U.S. attorney in about ten minutes. It is really difficult for federal prosecutors to bring and succeed on bribery charges, especially because in the last couple decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has really narrowed the scope of what counts as bribery.

And so, as you say, prosecutors have to be able to point to a specific official action that the defendant here, the mayor, took in exchange for these benefits. And the theory here is that what Eric Adams did was he pressured the New York Fire Department to expedite, to speed up their safety review on this place called the Turkish house, which these Turkish interests were trying to open up in Manhattan on a sped up basis because they had diplomats coming to visit.

So, in other words, these Turkish interests are trying to get construction done on this Turkish house because they're hosting big, important visitors. Eric Adams learns of that. And so as a result, and the allegation is because of these benefits he'd been given, Eric Adams then leans on the fire department and says, essentially, hey, guys, I need you to sign off on this quickly. Let's speed up the fire safety review. And that, in fact, was done. That is the essence of the quid pro quo that's alleged here.

BROWN: Yes. So, prosecutors are alleging that those were official acts. That is why this is a bribery charge. As Shimon pointed out, Mayor Adams and his legal team will argue, look, this was all just part of the business of being mayor of the city.

So, we heard a little bit from Mayor Adams who said he's vowing to fight. He's going to stay in the job, clearly digging in his hills, and any moment now, the Southern District of New York, we're going to hear from the U.S. attorney from there who brought this indictment against the mayor of New York City.

We have much more after this break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:25:00]

BROWN: All right. Let me go back to Shimon Prokupez as we're reading through this indictment and seeing what these prosecutors allege. One part really stands out to me, Shimon, the prosecutors alleging that Adams changed his phone pass code and then said he forgot what the code was, they say, to conceal his conduct.

PROKUPECZ: Well, this is really interesting, right? And certainly these allegations don't really bode well for him. Because what the FBI is saying here is that when they went to get his phone on November 6, remember this was about a year ago now, he was leaving an event and they approached him with a search warrant and told him that he had to turn his phones over.

They alleged that he didn't have his personal phone on him that day and that he agreed to give the phone to them the next day, that his phone was not on him. He provided it to investigators the next day, pursuant to a subpoena, and that it was locked and required a password. They say that Adams had changed the password a day earlier to, quote, prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone. And then he claimed he had forgotten the password, the indictment states. So, essentially alleging, right, some kind of a cover up here. I mean, let's call it what this is.

The FBI says they go to him on November 6. They say we want your phones. He says, I don't have my personal phone on him. The next day they arranged for him to give them his personal phone. And then he says, oh, I changed the password. It's locked. I don't know the password. So, that's really interesting, certainly, isn't it, Pam?

BROWN: It is. And it also says it alleges and Adams' staff are left to go to the bathroom while meeting with investigators and deleted encrypted messaging apps.

I want to go back to Mayor Adams as he answers questions.

Let's listen.

ADAMS: This is a city that is extremely resilient. This is a city that we have gone through some difficult and hard times, and we're going to continue to move forward as a city. And that's what has shown. I think the narrative here that's missing two months ago when my phones were removed, we have not gone backwards. We have not stood still. We showed how we operate during difficult times. And when you say who's the point person that's going to deal with business communities, who's going to deal with the business of running the city, the point person is Eric Adams. I'm the mayor of the city of New York. And I have a competent team of deputy mayors, a competent team of people who are going to continue to lead forward, and we're excited about that.

Okay, go ahead, Katie. Yes.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE) campaign and then a co-conspirator, you said you deleted messages from. I mean, the allegations you kept going on what we've been reporting for almost a year, what do you say to that? I mean, you have, you said you traveled to these countries? Do you deny that you took any kickbacks from these countries? Do you deny that you (INAUDIBLE)?

ADAMS: What is your question?

[11:30:00]

Yes, that's it. That's 11 questions.

REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE).

ADAMS: Yes, it might - listen.