Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll look at what the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams will mean for an administration already shaken by corruption investigations. We’ll also meet someone who makes television commercials, but that’s not his real job.
Mayor Eric Adams, a retired police captain who promised to reduce crime when he was elected three years ago, has been indicted after a federal corruption investigation, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The indictment raised immediate questions about Adams’s ability to serve as mayor. He is the first mayor in modern New York City history to be charged while in office.
“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams said in a statement. “If I am charged, I am innocent, and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”
The indictment is sealed, and what charges he will face is unclear. The New York Times reported that prosecutors were focusing on interactions that Adams and his campaign had with the Turkish government.
Adams once called himself the “the future of the Democratic Party” and the “Biden of Brooklyn.” Now the mayor’s prospects of winning a second term — or even serving out the remainder of his current term — are in jeopardy.
Brad Lander, the city comptroller, who is running for mayor, said that “the most appropriate path forward is for him to step down so that New York City can get the full focus its leadership demands.” Before the report of the indictment on Wednesday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said he should resign “for the good of the city.”
Amid the calls for Adams’s resignation, some voices will matter more than others: Gov. Kathy Hochul; Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader; and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, who has known Adams for decades. They will probably keep their options open until the details of the indictment are known.
If Adams resigned, the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, would become the acting mayor. He has been a critic of the mayor and has cast doubt on Adams’s ability to govern amid the swirl of investigations. Under the city charter, an acting mayor has three days to set the date for a special election to choose a new mayor.
No public advocate has become acting mayor before — the job was not created until 1993. Only two mayors have resigned — Jimmy Walker in 1932 and William O’Dwyer in 1950, both after corruption scandals.
The F.B.I. seized Adams’s electronic devices last November. A lawyer for the mayor, Boyd Johnson, said at the time that Adams had not been accused of wrongdoing and had “immediately complied with the F.B.I.’s request” for the devices, which were returned a few days later.
Four federal corruption investigations have sent Adams’s administration into free fall, with some of the highest-ranking officials in City Hall coming under scrutiny. One investigation appears to center on a possible bribery scheme involving a consulting company run by Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety, and of David Banks, who announced his resignation as schools chancellor on Tuesday.
Federal agents have also seized the phone of the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright, David Banks’s fiancée, in connection with that investigation.
A separate investigation involves Edward Caban, who resigned as police commissioner days after federal agents had seized his phone and that of his chief of staff. Agents also seized the phones belonging to the commanders of two precincts in Queens.
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Making television commercials is not his real job
Jason Haber touches up scripts and takes his place in front of the camera when the action starts, making advertisements that will usually be seen by one or two people at a time. Five at the most.
Haber is a real estate agent with Compass. His commercials play on Taxi TV, a service on video screens in the back seats of cabs.
My colleague Matt Yan says that Haber’s advertisements are yet another way for agents to boost their brand or listings in a media environment crowded with highly produced TikTok tours and reality TV series that elevate some agents to celebrity status. Recognition is the name of the game, and taxi passengers are a captive audience.
His latest ad poked fun at a phrase he said he had heard often: “I should’ve bought five years ago.”
“Trust us, that’s nothing new,” his aunt, Toni Haber — also an agent with Compass — says before a series of quick scenes with characters repeating the should-have-bought line, starting with a man and a woman who appear to be on the edge of a Civil War battle. The gun blasts behind them are digital effects.
The ads can be restricted to play only when taxis are in certain areas of the city. For a $4.15 million listing at 15 Hudson Yards, Ann Cutbill Lenane, an agent with Douglas Elliman who also advertises on Taxi TV, arranged for the ad to play no farther south than 14th Street and no farther north than 79th Street.
Haber said that a seller who saw the ads in a cab had asked him to create one for a listing that recently closed. Haber also said that he had been recognized in restaurants and had received emails from strangers thanking him for making them laugh.
The reason the ads work, he said, “is people are laughing with us and not at us.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Cut to order
Dear Diary:
I was at the butcher counter at a D’Agostino supermarket on the East Side of Manhattan. I rang the bell on the counter, and the butcher appeared.
“Two veal loin chops, please,” I said. “About 1.5 inches thick and about 15 ounces each.”
“You don’t want a butcher, lady,” he said. “You want a surgeon.”
— Molly Schechter
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Makaelah Walters and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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The post Mayor Eric Adams Is Indicted appeared first on New York Times.
