So long and farewell, Eric Leroy Adams! The formerly indicted sitting mayor of New York City has officially dropped his re-election campaign, leaving a three-way race between former New York governor-turned-Democratic primary loser-cum-independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani.
Donald Trump had been pushing Adams to drop out to make it easier for Cuomo, Trump’s fellow gropey creep from Queens, to win. But that’s still not too likely either, as polls show Mamdani ahead by double digits even before Adams dropped out, and Adams rarely polling as high as even 10 percent. And confusingly, Adams’s name will still be on the ballot, because it’s too late to take it off.
It’s a sorry end for a career that once seemed so promising! In spite of his many other flaws, he truly worked his way up from the bottom, starting as an officer in the New York City Transit Police, and retiring at the rank of Captain. Then he served in the New York State Senate representing Brooklyn, and became the first Black person to be elected Brooklyn Borough President.
And in 2021 Adams won a landslide victory as mayor, over Curtis Sliwa, who is like the Vermin Supreme of the New York City mayor’s race. He’s the founder of the Guardian Angels crime-fightin’ outfit, who admitted to making up crimes for the group to pretend to solve, hyuk.
But after Adams’s election, accusations of nepotism, cronyism and bad mayoring against Adams started almost immediately.
And then, uh oh, his employees started to get raided by the FBI, starting in November of 2023 with the apartment of Adams’s top fund-raiser, 25-year-old Brianna Suggs.
Then in September 2024, Edward Caban, the man Adams chose to lead the NYPD, resigned after the FBI seized his cell phone. And the world began to learn that multiple investigations against people in Adams’s orbit were going on. Eventually fourteen people in Adams’s circle resigned, had their homes searched, or got charged with something bribey. And then Adams himself became the first sitting mayor to get indicted in New York City history! Refresh yourself with the balls-out details of Adams’s indictment from September of 2024 below!
PREVIOUSLY!
Short version, Adams was accused of accepting free and discounted luxury travel in exchange for intervening with the fire department to open a new consulate without an inspection, ahead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in September 2021.
Adams was supposed to go on trial in April, but then a funny thing happened on the way to the courthouse. Donald Trump’s DOJ got involved to try to get Adams’s charges dropped, in exchange for Adams’s administration cooperating with ICE, against New York City’s sanctuary city laws. But prosecutors did not want to corporate with this blatant quid pro quo, and DOJ leadership, fronted by then-acting Justice Department number two Emil Bove, put all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with one hour to decide who would file to dismiss Adams’s indictment, or else EVERYBODY would be fired.
Eventually two lawyers volunteered as tributes. And when it came before him, Judge Dale Ho dismissed Adams’s case with prejudice, so the DOJ could not quid pro quo hold re-filing charges over his head, as the whole stank-ass situation “smack[ed] of a bargain.”
Sure did! Some of Adams’s co-conspirators were not so lucky. His chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, got indicted on more bribery charges last month. Adams’s former aide and liaison to the Muslim community, Mohamed Bahi, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in August related to his work helping Adams allegedly do bribes, and will be sentenced in November. Brooklyn construction magnate Erden Arkan pleaded guilty in January to a conspiracy charge for working with a Turkish official to get Adams his money, and was sentenced to probation.
Oh, and Winnie Greco, Adams’s Asian affairs adviser with connections to the Chinese regime, is accused of traveling with him on at least one of his discount trips. And now she is being investigated by the Eastern District of New York for collecting money via straw donors through a nonprofit called the Alliance of Asian American Friends. Derp! She’s the one who gave that reporter money in a potato chip bag and claimed it was some kind of Chinese cultural practice. (It is not.)
So, Eric Adams could have it much worse. He has fat pensions to retire on, and no justice system problems, unlike all of the lackey suckers who tried to help him get his nut. Retire while you’re ahead, already!
[New York Times archive link]
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My crystal ball says “special analyst representing ‘the left’ on Fox oped panelist shows.” No. Wait. That might be “anal cyst…”
Adams is dropping out to spend more time ensuring Cuomo has a chance.