Less than a week after Mayor Eric Adams pleaded not guilty to charges of bribery and fraud, federal prosecutors told a judge that they might bring additional charges against him and that charges against other people were “likely.”
“There are several related investigations here,” Hagan Cordell Scotten, a prosecutor with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, said during a hearing in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday. Prosecutors said that the case had been complicated by their inability to unlock Mr. Adams’s cellphone, since he had said he could not remember the password.
The judge, Dale E. Ho, said he would set a trial date soon.
The nearly 90-minute hearing was the latest step in the case against Mr. Adams, the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to be indicted. Last week, prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment that accuses him of bribery conspiracy, fraud and soliciting illegal campaign donations. Mr. Adams, 64, has denied the allegations, and his legal team has insisted that it is “not a real case.”
The mayor, a former Brooklyn borough president and police captain, is accused of accepting free and discounted luxury travel for years and of pressuring the Fire Department to sign off on the opening of a new high-rise Turkish Consulate building in Midtown Manhattan.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Brooklyn appear to be conducting at least four separate inquiries that have pulled in people from Mr. Adams’s orbit. Several members of his circle have had their phones seized, and City Hall has seen several top aides resign.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said that Mr. Adams accepted benefits worth more than $100,000 over nearly a decade, as well as illegal campaign contributions.
On Wednesday, Mr. Adams sat in federal court at the defense table next to one of his lawyers, Alex Spiro, in a dark blue suit, a blue tie and a white shirt. He looked straight ahead for most of the hearing as the judge set a schedule for motions and hearings. Four federal prosecutors sat across the aisle.
Mr. Spiro said he wanted any trial finished by March, before the Democratic primary for mayor in June, in which his client faces four challengers. Mr. Spiro said the timing was important because it made a difference whether Mr. Adams gets to “meet with members of the community as an innocent man versus with this hanging over his head.”
Mr. Scotten, the prosecutor, said that the charges stem from a long-running conspiracy by Mr. Adams that he called a “sacrifice of his duty.” The investigation, Mr. Scotten told the judge, had begun in summer 2021, before Mr. Adams had become mayor.
Mr. Scotten said the government has a lot of evidence that it must share with the defense before trial. The materials include bank, credit card and telephone records and communications, some of which had to be translated from Turkish.
Mr. Scotten said that there had been “significant issue” of interference, citing a witness who he said had received a message from Mr. Adams instructing the person to lie to the F.B.I.
Prosecutors also said they were still unable to get access to Mr. Adams’s phone, which they had seized last year. Mr. Adams said at the time that he couldn’t remember the password, because he had recently changed it.
Mr. Spiro said that defense lawyers would get a copy of the phone’s contents to prosecutors, and said that they would find nothing.
Since Mr. Adams’s arraignment on Friday, his lawyers have filed several motions before Judge Ho. On Monday, they asked the court to dismiss a bribery charge. On Tuesday, they accused federal prosecutors of leaking information about the investigation that led to the mayor’s indictment and asked the judge to hold a hearing and issue sanctions against them.
Pressing for a quick trial date, Mr. Spiro said most of the government’s case was based on the bribery charge, which “we don’t expect to survive.”
“We have every right, the public has every right, to a speedy trial here,” Mr. Spiro argued to the judge, adding: “We don’t want this case dragging.”
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