04/11 Last Week In Eric Adams
He sucked more than usual last week! Early Voting starts in 64 days!
CALENDAR
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4/16 @ 6 pm ET, The City Club of NY is hosting a Manhattan Borough President Forum: Register here!
4/16: Mayoral Forum for Immigrant NYC (hosted by New York Immigration Coalition)
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Early Voting begins 4/19
Election Day is 4/29
The Eric Adams Of It All
Unfortunately for all of us, Eric Adams is having a very good April so far. Here’s the skinny!
Back in September, NYC’s Party Cop Mayor Eric Adams was indicted on five counts in Federal Court. This club had everything!: the Turkish government! Bribes and airline upgrades! Straw donors! Seized phones (and “forgotten” passwords)! FBI raids! (Oh my).
This week, after much deliberation, Judge Dale Ho dismissed the charges against Eric Adams, without prejudice.
🔹 The good news: that means the T®umP DOJ can’t hold this over Eric’s head if he doesn’t comply with their authoritarian agenda (which is what they wanted).
🔹 The bad news: Eric Adams will comply anyway and he just got away with a whole bunch of corruption.
Then what did that bitch baby Eric Adams do?! He decided to skip the Democratic Primary altogether, and will run as an independent candidate in November.
In this issue of the Level Up newsletter, we’ll dive into the nitty gritty of Eric Adams’ case, what just happened, and what that means for this year’s Mayoral Election.
Want more? The DEEP DIVE below goes even further.
SPV Radar
Where we’re going, what we’re reading!
We’re in The New York Groove! We chatted about what we’re up to, and how to make the most of this political moment both on and offline.
Interview Mag, profiled Mayoral Fav Zohran Mamdani with 18 New Yorkers asking the tough questions: (fyi, he’s a Miranda).
The New York Editorial Board, a crew of longtime NYC political journalists, have banded together to make a substack interviewing every Mayoral candidate. Long reads, good for a commute!
04/13 Fundraiser party for Public Service Announcement! Donate here and dance your butt off on Sunday at El Puente Community Center in Los Sures/South Williamsburg.
04/18: Combo Chimbita @ Night Club 101 or 4/25 @ TV EYE
04/19 Women’s and Non-Binary Ride w/Transit Alternatives!
04/26: T4Z: A Trans Community Town Hall with Zohran Mamdani @ Nowadays
DEEP DIVE: THE END OF AN ERIC
Eric Adams won’t run in the Democratic Primary on June 24th, instead opting to run as an independent candidate in November, forcing his way into the General Election.
This follows Judge Dale Ho’s dismissal on Tuesday of the charges against Eric Adams—five of them—without prejudice, meaning that charges for the same crime can’t be reintroduced later.
But it was a long road to get here, and it all affects the Mayoral Election: first the Primary in June, and the November General Election.
Let’s break it down:
What Did He Do (Allegedly 🤪)
After almost a year of raids, seized devices, & so many resignations of his inner circle of top city officials, Eric Adams’ indictment was a long time coming.
🇹🇷 Eric Adams sought & accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals through straw donors. What this means: Turkish bureaucrat(s) wants to give Adams campaign money ➡ ask some eligible NYers to donate in their name ➡ reimburse ‘em w/ Turkish money ➡ 🤑. This made the campaign eligible for public matching for “local” donors. He got $10M (!!!!) in matching funds from the NYC Campaign Finance Board! Taxpayers pay for this (WE PAID FOR THIS)! Give my money back Eric! For the 2021 race, the improper funding and campaign dollars probably indirectly contributed to his win and the havoc he’s wreaking on New Yorkers still today.
Of note: there were other cases of straw donors reimbursed by bigger-dollar donors who had maxed out their contribution to Eric Adams. The Turkish ones were the only ones brought up in *this* case, but the other kinds were still happening.
💎 BRIBES: Adams received free airfare, entertainment, hotels (suites worth $40k!), courtesy of Turkish Airlines, & directed staffers to cover it up & create fake paper trails‼️. Adams was so Turkish-Airlines-pilled that he once asked if he could fly the airline to Easter Island, Chile from NYC. (He couldn’t).
🤝 QUID PRO QUO: In exchange for the meals & planes & all the illegally donated campaign money, Adams directed the FDNY+DOB to look the other way on inspections and permits for a big new development that would be the site of… the Turkish consulate (so it was finished in time for the Turkish president’s NYC visit). Adams threatened to fire the FDNY rep conducting the inspection if he didn’t comply.
📟 BURNER PHONES: FBI seized Adams’ phone & iPad, but not his personal cell, where he had just changed the passcode and he “forgot it actually since I just changed it I’m sooo sorry” when it was time to hand it over. Another associate was found to have deleted WhatsApp messages that were evidence when she went to the bathroom during an FBI interrogation. Super cool and innocent stuff.
In late September, right before the indictment landed, we also learned that the FBI was investigating Adams’ dealings with other countries, including Israel, Uzbekistan, China, South Korea, and Qatar. File that away for later, but also that’s rich considering how many flag-raisings Eric Adams has been to when he said that “It’s despicable that schools would allow another country’s flag to fly in our country,” about pro-Palestine encampments and movements at universities.
Then What Happened?!
September 2024
At this point last year, we know there’s a Mayoral Election™ on the way, and several candidates have already announced they’re running. Adams and his lawyer Alex Spiro (also lawyer for, who-the-fuck-else, but Elon Musk) request a speedy trial (suggesting in April 2025 even!) because it will allow Adams to put the case behind him and get back to the voters and campaign in a timely manner, before the June primary. Remember that for later, too. Eric Adams and his lawyer asked for an April trial.
November 2024
So then Trump wins the Presidential election, and shortly after that, Adams meets with border czar Tom Homan (same guy he’ll appear with on Fox and Friends in February ‘25, where they’re chummy as fuck but Homan says he’ll be “up [Adams’] butt” if he doesn’t come through on enforcing immigration in NYC). Not that that was a problem with before Trump: Adams said in September 2023 that migrants will “destroy” New York City and has been actively anti-sanctuary city. That’s one way to deal with Tom Homan! (We prefer this way!)
January 2025
Adams attends the inauguration in January instead of his previously scheduled MLK Jr. Day breakfast in Harlem. He also goes to Mar-A-Lago. Adams has already directed senior officials in his orbit not to talk shit about the Trump admin. Y’know, like any Democratic mayor would.
February 2025
Trump’s Department of Justice tells prosecutors to drop charges against Adams. This is the Southern District of New York, but it’s a federal court, so players like AG Pam Bondi and Associate Deputy AG Emil Bove (pronounced like Sade) are calling the shots here. But a judge has already been appointed, so he gets the final say. Bove says basically that the case against him will distract Adams from immigration enforcement in his duties as Mayor, and actually it was brought up for political reasons by Joe Biden and Damian Williams(?), something-something witch hunt?
SEVEN prosecutors at the Southern District of New York resign over this. And not even super lib-lefty-in-the-name-of-justice-defiant-of-Trump kinds of judges! Danielle Sassoon, the first judge to resign, wrote a resignation letter that was *chefs kiss* but she also clerked for Justice Scalia. She’s like a lowercase “c” follow the law kind of conservative (the original kind? Not whatever today’s conservatives are doing). In it, she basically says there was *another* quid pro quo between Bove and Adams, where he heavily implied he would drop the case if Adams complied on immigration, that he yelled at a lawyer for taking notes about that meeting, and crucially, that there were MORE! INDICTMENTS! COMING! AGAINST! ADAMS! That they were in the process of investigating!
Quick but related aside: There have also been so many orbiting moons to this planet of a case. The Hell Gate Table of Success does an amazing job at tracking who’s who in the administration, with some playful Raided / Resigned / Indicted graphics to keep track of all of these people! Deputy Mayors, Chancellors, Police Commissioners, chief fundraisers, lots of now-empty seats at the Table of Success. The City’s’ Chief Counsel (aka the main lawyer for the city) also resigns in this era of raids and indictments (in September 2024), saying “I have concluded that I can no longer effectively serve in my position. I wish you nothing but the best.”
Throughout all of this Adams appointed other crooks, homophobes, his brother, nightclub owners, and more to positions of power in the city. I could keep going but it’s mind-boggling where this guy finds the fucking nerve.
Back to the case and the drama at DOJ: Pretty much all the lawyers in this office refused to comply with Bove’s request to drop the charges.
Another attorney who wrote a very good resignation letter was this guy Hagan Scotten, another conservative-but-whoa-this-is-too-fucking-far type. He wrote “...any US attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” IT WAS NEVER GOING TO BE HIM!
So Bove signs it himself. The #2 Attorney General in the DOJ has to do the paperwork himself, making him the fool and the coward.
Four of Adams’ Deputy Mayors resign at this point too because working on his sinking ship is a liability.
Another Thing: this whole time, leaders and elected officials are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to remove Eric Adams from office (which the governor has the power to do in New York, but it has never happened before). She seriously considers it, but decides not to. She still could, but she won’t.
Judge Ho holds a hearing in mid-February, asks a few questions, and comes up with this: because DOJ (Trump’s side) and defendant (Adams’ side) were in agreement about dismissing the charges, there was nobody in court sharing an argument for why he *shouldn’t* dismiss the charges, so he was going to find one to argue the legal basis so his opinion was well-rounded. And he found another small “c” conservative guy, Paul Clement. Clement comes back like a month later and says hmmm actually, if you’re gonna dismiss, you should dismiss “with prejudice” to take away the possibility of any future funny business or *persecution* of an elected official (Adams) for acting differently than DOJ or the Trump admin wants.
Last Week In Eric Adams
Last week, on April 2nd, that’s what Judge Ho did. But it’s important to note that in his dismissal, he in no way alluded to Adams’ innocence, or the strength of the case, but only that he couldn’t force the DOJ to pursue it if they didn’t want to anymore. His ruling tore apart the DOJ’s argument, saying it “smacks of bribery.” But by the end of the day, Adams was an unindicted man, probably went to Zero Bond to celebrate. (He got dinner with Rudy Giuliani at a fucking Newsmax event the day after, a sign of what was to come).
Last Thursday Adams announced, on the last day he could, that he’s actually not going to do the Democratic primary after all, and will run as an independent candidate in November.
What This Means For The Election
The last actual-viable independent candidate run for Mayor was when NY had an “Independent Party” as its own thing, and it was Bloomberg in 2009 (running for this third term). That party is now defunct in New York, so Adams is running as a “small i” independent, partiless (that’s why he won’t have a primary). Now, Adams needs to collect 3,750 signatures before May 27 to appear on the November ballot (the petitioning deadline for Democrats was last week).
Eric Adams’ current approval rating is 20%, and in the latest major poll released a couple weeks ago, he was polling third, at 8%, behind Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani. In the last three months, his campaign made less than $20,000. (Zohran Mamdani raised $645,000 in the same period). Also, because of all the crime and bribes, the Campaign Finance Board (NYC Vote’s parent org) ruled that they were skeptical of where Adams’ money came from and therefore wouldn’t grant public matching funds to his campaign. So he’s deeply unpopular and broke (and out $4M).
We said it last week: Eric Adams is being a little bitch baby. And we mean it. Eric Adams is avoiding having to campaign against a strong slate of opponents, who have been dragging him on the campaign trail. He’s claiming it’s because this case has been sooOoOo distracting, but remember that *they asked for an April trial* to get things over with before the election! He said on Tucker Carlson months ago “the [Democratic] party left him” but let’s be real: Adams never showed up in the first place! I mean, the man was a registered Republican from 1995-2002!
Eric Adams is a Republican who lives in New Jersey, and we can’t wait for him to not be Mayor.
FYI: There is no Ranked Choice Voting in the General Election, and the candidate with the most votes wins.
Adams running as an independent may change the calculus of how to counter Cuomo in the Primary, but one thing’s for sure: we’ll still DREAM FOR NYC, DON’T RANK EVIL ANDREW [CUOMO] for MAYOR.
New York deserves nice things and there is a STRONG slate of candidates who don’t hate New York City! We’ll be ranking in all 5 spots, with more to come from us in the next few weeks. Early Voting starts in 64 days!