Less than a week after pleading not guilty to charges of bribery and fraud, Eric Adams, the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to be indicted, is scheduled to return to federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday.
Mr. Adams, 64, has defended himself against the allegations detailed in a five-count indictment that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York unveiled last week. He faces charges of bribery conspiracy, fraud and soliciting illegal campaign donations.
The mayor, a former Brooklyn borough president and police captain, is accused of accepting luxury travel for years before becoming the Democratic nominee for mayor and of pressuring the Fire Department to sign off on the opening of a new high-rise Turkish Consulate building in Midtown Manhattan after he was elected. Prosecutors said that Mr. Adams accepted benefits worth more than $100,000 over nearly a decade, as well as illegal campaign contributions.
Alex Spiro, one of Mr. Adams’s lawyers, has said that the charges are “not a real case.” New Yorkers will “see through this,” he said.
The hearing on Wednesday is scheduled to take place before Judge Dale E. Ho, who is assigned to the case, and is expected to be a largely procedural first step in which the judge is likely to set a schedule for both sides to file motions and may set tentative dates for a trial.
On Friday, Mr. Adams was arraigned and was told that he could have no contact with any individual witness or others on a list prosecutors would provide concerning the “facts and circumstances” in the indictment. He will not be limited from communicating about business or private family matters, the judge ruled.
Since the arraignment, Mr. Adams’s lawyers have filed several motions before Judge Ho. On Monday, they asked the court to dismiss a bribery charge against the mayor. On Tuesday, his lawyers 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.
Since the indictment, Mr. Adams has visited churches and held news conferences to shore up support. And he has said that he will not resign, even as calls for him to do so have grown.
Mr. Adams has said that the prosecutors’ allegations are based on lies and that the federal government has targeted him because he was critical of the Biden administration during the city’s migrant crisis.
“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” he said in a video statement released the night that news of his indictment broke. “If I am charged, I am innocent, and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.”
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