(upbeat music) - Today we are announcing campaign finance, bribery, and conspiracy charges against Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City. As the indictment alleges, Mayor Adams engaged in a long-running conspiracy in which he solicited and knowingly accepted illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors and corporations. - We are not surprised. - We expected this. This is not surprising to us at all. The actions that have unfolded over the last 10 months, the leaks, the commentary, the demonizing. This did not surprise us that we reached this day. And I ask New York is to wait to hear our defense before making any judgments. - Welcome to New York One's off topic on politics. I'm New York One investigative reporter, Courtney Gross. A historic indictment, Mayor Adams was indicted on Thursday and now faces five federal charges, including bribery, wire fraud, and soliciting campaign contributions from a foreign national. It was an earth-shattering update for our city. Our city hall in modern history, never before, has a sitting mayor been indicted. The mayor quickly responded, urging New Yorkers to be patient. Wait, he said, he will defend himself. He is innocent and a target of unjust prosecution. It was a head-spinning development that rocked New York's political scene and we have a lot to discuss here. Joining me as always, or most weeks, for the discussion is our Bobby Kousa, who is shuffling through a lot of paper right now. - Yeah, well, it's a long indictment and I took a lot of notes over the place. - Notes in the corner. - A long day. Courtney and I were on TV a lot today. - I was on TV a lot last night, as was, and you know it is a very special episode. If we have political anchor, Errol Lewis here too. - Well, you know, the time conspired against us. My podcast, you decide, I had already been put to bed and finalized and Anthony had already sort of uploaded it and then the indictment broke and it was kind of like, "Wow, man, can I talk with these other guys?" (laughing) - So we have a lot to discuss. I think it was what, nine o'clock Wednesday night, which, you know, we're taping at eight o'clock Thursday night, which is pretty late for us, but we've been waiting and waiting for more news, breaking news, so much news. But it was, I guess, almost 24 hours ago that the news broke, first and the newer times, that a federal indictment was forthcoming, which was just, I mean, I don't know what you guys were doing, but I was sitting out to dinner. It was my wedding anniversary, actually. - Oh, happy anniversary, happy anniversary, yeah. - So my husband and I really haven't done any nights out or like we've done some, but like certainly not a lot since post-baby and we had a babysitter, we were out to dinner in Brooklyn, having a night out, we had just paid the check and then I looked at my phone and I saw the alert and I was like, "Oh." What kind of food? - We were at Romans in Fort Green, which is like, it's very, very good. I don't know what kind of cuisine it is. And I guess it's kind of Italian. - Yeah, good, good. - I had a steak. - Did he just leave your husband to sign the check? - I couldn't, he was paying anyway, so I was like, "Bye, I gotta go, see ya." You know, like normally, I live so far away that I don't know if I would have been able to turn around and come back so fast, but I was able to get here in like 20 minutes. - No, I was not called back into the office 'cause I knew I'd have to be on TV this morning. But as soon as I turned on New York One, which was a little bit before 10 o'clock, so like maybe, I don't know, 45 minutes after the times first broke the news, I turned on New York One and Errol is on set and I'm like, "How would you be Errol get on TV?" So if I'm like, "Does Errol's just like sleep in a suit?" - I kind of know, our listeners probably know this, but none of us live extremely close to the station. - Look, we're all a little bit far away. - And then Courtney's on TV and I know Courtney lives in The Rockaways, I'm like, "How did she get to the station so far?" (laughing) - Well, in my case, I was nearby. I was in Tribeca. I had been emceeing a charity gala for a wonderful organization called Riseboro. Used to be called Ridgewood Bushwick, Senior Citizens. And they do a lot of different stuff, affordable housing, stuff with seniors. It had been started, in fact, by Vito Lopez. - I was gonna say, "Riseboro is also a Frank Coron client." - Uh-huh, yeah, well, the founder Vito Lopez later became an assemblyman, later became the boss of Brooklyn, later got into extreme amounts of legal trouble, but he's deceased now, and that's not what we're talking about. Anyway, it's a great organization. So I come out of the gala at 8.40. My wife called and said, "Did you see? "There's an indictment, no, no, no, no." And so I told the Uber driver, I said, "Well, I gotta put in a new address. "I gotta go to New York One." I sent a note to New York One saying, "I'm on my way." And then they get back to me, and they're like, it was responding to, it was, it was a hoax. It was an early hoax that had been put out. Thank you, Councilman, Joe Barrelli. He thought, I guess he thought it was funny. I don't know what it was, in any event. I had Eggle in my face. Our political director, Bob Hart, said, "Go home and get some sleep. "You're fantasizing." And so then I tell the Uber driver, "Okay, sorry, I'm going back to Brooklyn." And then, 15 minutes later, at 9/10, the real thing broke. And Bob sent me a text saying, "Get to the studio." (laughing) For real this time. For real, it's just, so I say, one more, Uber guy doesn't care, is the meter's running, right? He's doing just fine. And at that point, you can expense it. Oh, no, this is definitely getting expensive. (laughing) And I mentioned to him that the mayor had been indicted. Total New York response did not care at all. He was sort of turned up his Middle Eastern music. (laughing) It just turned the car around. And it was cool. It was good. I mean, we got there at 9.30. She came running in right behind me. And I was like, "How the heck did she do that?" I mean, I was feeling pretty good 'cause I happened to have a suit on. I hadn't even taken off my tie. And I got there 20 minutes after the news broke and Courtney was right behind me. Yeah. So now that we're all in the studio, I mean, we didn't have the indictment last night when we were all rushing in. But we certainly got it this morning. And we've all read it. We've all come through it. What is it, 54, 56 pages? 57. 57, okay. Sorry I was off a little bit. But so, Bobby, break it down. What does it say? What is the mayor facing here? Well, I mean, it boils down to illegal foreign influence, from people with ties to the Turkish government. And in one case, an actual Turkish government official. I mean, there's so much to try to get through in the indictment. But I think in a nutshell, the mayor was as alleged in the indictment was taking foreign money for his 2021 campaign. And this dates back to 20. How far back were you from? 2014. Yeah, the first trip I think they talk about was 2015. I think there was two trips in one year, I think in 2015 to Turkey. And that's when the groundwork was somewhat laid where he's starting to form relationships with Turkish nationals there. And they're starting to spark an interest in the mayor. I don't think the actual donations come until 28. Right, I mean, I guess there's a few different buckets. There's gifts that he receives, including upgrades on travel. There is all these trips that he took, free meals, these high-end restaurants, these luxury entertainment as it was framed in the indictment. Whatever that means, yeah. And then there were the foreign donations. And of course, you can't take money for a campaign from foreign nationals. And much of that money was sort of laundered, I don't know if laundered is the right word, but it was funneled through straw donors. And straw donors is basically phony donors, right? You want to contribute to a campaign, but you're either doing it illegally or over the contribution limits. So you do it in someone else's name essentially. And you get reimbursed basically. Right. You know, you give somebody some cash. And the point is that, you know, the Adams campaign in this instance or would know that who the real donor is behind it, because then that's where the influence peddling happens. That's where the quill, the quill, the quill, the quill, the pro, the quill. So he gets the gifts. He gets the illegal campaign donations. And then obviously that's being done in order to curry favor, right, with an elected official who they think is going places. And then in exchange, you know, as laid out in the indictment, really the, I think the primary instance of some sort of favor, some sort of official favor that the mayor is performing for these people is in 2021 when he sort of greases the wheels in order to cut some red tape to get the Turkish consulate building in Midtown Manhattan opened in time for this ribbon cutting that they had planned in spite of the fact that it hadn't gotten the proper fire safety approvals from the FDA. - And still as not to this day is my understanding. I mean, you know, this is very problematic that a 36-story building has gone up in Manhattan and it doesn't have, you know, proper fire protection. It is not a safe building. That's a danger to the public. That's a danger to the buildings that are next to it. That's, you know, that's really bad business. And the money, you know, as you describe it, in the indictment, they're describing it as what I would call like sort of triply dirty, triply dirty money, right? Where it's illegal to have foreign money come in as a campaign contribution under any circumstances. It is illegal to do it through a corporation and it is illegal to make it a straw donation in somebody else's name. And they're saying all of that happened and it happened over and over and over again. And then I guess as a fourth level of illegality, the money, the gifts that were received were never disclosed on the conflict of interest form. - So we're not talking small gifts, right? Like it's a hundred K worth, a hundred thousand dollars according to the US Attorney. - Yeah, I mean, look, some of this luxury travel, I mean, you know, I'm thinking, you know, maybe in the name of investigating this, we should go and check out some of it, I mean. (laughing) - Can we get to expense that, too? - To heavily discounted free business class tickets for three on round trip from New York to France, Turkey, and China. Heavily discounted stay in the Bentley suite of the St. Regis in Istanbul. Estimated value, $41,000. - Yeah, that's a lot of money. - Yeah, we should go check that out. - What's interesting is that we sort of knew about a lot of this, right? I mean, none of this was a huge revelation. We knew what the feds were looking at. We knew that we were looking at his ties to Turkey. We knew that they were looking at some of these foreign donations. We knew that they were looking at, you know, his efforts to intervene on behalf of the consulate. What we didn't know was the level of detail. We didn't know what was behind it, right? We didn't know the fact that-- - We even knew that there was flight upgrades. Like, we knew that that was what they were looking at. And I think even in our reporting up until the release of the indictment, there was, I don't know, I don't know, you guys might disagree with me, but in my conversations with sources, as all along I was saying, it's gotta be a lot more than just some free flight upgrades, right? Like, that's not gonna be the death knell for Mayor Adams's career. - Yeah. - Oh, you didn't think this indictment was gonna focus on those particular charges? - I just thought it was gonna have to be more than flight upgrades. - I see. - You know, just the way, even the way the mayor had been asked about it before, the mayor had said, you know, kind of brushed it off as a no big deal that, you know, we all get upgraded sometimes. I don't, I mean-- - Well, let me know. (laughing) - It's in here right there. - My points aren't there, but-- - Look, bribery is bribery. If it was cash in a bag, it would be clearer that it was wrong, but in this case, these upgrades, you know, I mean, one telling detail that runs throughout the indictment is that even if he wasn't going to Turkey, he would go through Turkey, which in some cases was like clearly not the easiest way to get there, right? So he's-- - And he would only flight. This is all through Turkish Airlines, which is a, I mean, would you call it a subsidiary? It's the state-owned or state-sanctioned-- - Partially owned by state, yeah. - It was the one that would give him all of the upgrades. And so even if he was going to France, where you can get, you know, a couple of nonstop flights a day out of JFK, or LaGuardia, he's still going through Turkey. - And in those layovers, because he would work so much, you know, would sort of bend over backwards to make sure he was going on Turkish Airlines, he would have these long layovers, potentially. And there was one nine-hour layover where the Turkish officials coordinate kind of a boat ride for him, some expensive meals for him, places for him to go during his nine-hour layover so that he doesn't get bored. - Yes, he was going to take a trip on the Bosphorus. And I think he turned down one of them. Oh, I've done that enough times. And one of those trips actually was one where, I don't think we accompanied him on it per se, but we certainly reported on it that shortly after he was elected, he went to Ghana. - Yeah, and he said it was a personal, spiritual journey, he wanted to go back to the motherland and this, that, and the other. And of course he went through Turkey to get there. - Yeah, but I mean, to your point, Courtney, the mayor has, a lot of this was out in the open, at least in terms of the travel, he's always talked about all the countries he's visited. And he has defended some of this conduct, right? He defended, he openly admitted to and defended the fact that he had approached the FDNY in order to get them to help expedite this thing with the Turkish consulate. But he said, he has made the argument that this is what elected officials are supposed to do, right? We're supposed to go out and we're supposed to advocate on behalf of people who, for whatever reason, we believe need some help, need to be prioritized, need to be- - Cook up the red tape, absolutely. - And he's talked about the constituency that he had in Brooklyn of Turkish immigrants in the Turkish American community. So he has not been necessarily hiding or shying away from some of the facts of the case as we knew them prior to today, but there's a lot more to the case as laid out in the indictment than we knew previous. - So I guess that's my question, is are the details now that we know this specific details damning enough to end his political career? - That is a question that only he can answer. I mean, we've been dutifully tallying up the number of officials who have called on him to step down, and it is a large group and it's only getting bigger by the day, and it includes people who were never particularly close to Eric Adams, but it also include a lot of them are just first DSA members and then some more Democrats, a lot of Brooklyn Democrats, a lot of centrist and moderate Democrats are now weighing in as well. Bob Holden in particular, who also ran as a Republican and is kind of like an Adams Democrat on some level, who has supported him on a lot of initiatives, has said what many of them are saying, which is that whether you're guilty or not, whether you're gonna fight this case legally, successfully or not, we cannot have a mayor who has to deal with these kind of charges while you're running a big, busy, complicated city. - Yeah, but I think the real political heavyweights have stopped short of saying that he should resign. I'm talking about Council speaker Adrian Adams, although she came pretty close to the line today. - She basically said, think about this, Mayor Adams. - Exactly. - Where is your moral compass and can you reasonably continue to manage the city when you have this massive indictment? - Right, she said you gotta think seriously about it, but you know, Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer and Governor Hochl have not gone that far. I mean, they have issued very sort of strongly worded statements, but I think the tide could turn at some point. - Yeah, strongly worded statements. So in fact, Bobby, we actually just got, you know, breaking news on the podcast, a new statement from Governor Hochl, we've been waiting for her all day. - Is it strongly worded? - Well, I'm honestly, I was just sent it, so I haven't even read the whole thing yet, but I guess, should I read the whole thing now? - Yeah, sure, let's hear it in real time. - Okay, let's read it and then we can react in real time. It's 8.30 right now, so this is what we just got from the governor. Quote, this is an extraordinarily difficult day for New York City. I have carefully reviewed the indictment released by the United States Department of Justice. This indictment is the latest in a disturbing pattern of events that has understandably contributed to a sense of unease among many New Yorkers. Our judicial system is based on the foundational principle that all of us are presumed innocent until proven otherwise. Yet those of us who have chosen a career in elected office know that we're held to a higher standard. Given the responsibilities we hold as public servants, that's entirely appropriate. New Yorkers deserve to know that their municipal government is working effectively, ethically, and in the best interests of the people, driving down crime, educating our kids, and ensuring basic city services continue unabated. It's now up to Mayor Adams to show the city that he is able to lead in that manner. My focus is on protecting the people of New York and ensuring stability in the city. While I review my options and obligations as the governor of New York, I expect the mayor to take the next few days to review the situation and find an appropriate path forward to ensure the people of New York City are being well served by their leaders. We must give New Yorkers confidence that there is steady, responsible leadership at every level of government. I would say my initial reaction to that is, I mean, she's, I kind of think she's threatening him there, right? - A little bit? - A little bit? - Yeah, I could remove you, but please quit. That would be my interpretation of it. - Yeah. - Which is stronger, I would say, that's almost stronger than we've seen from anybody else. I mean, we thought we have Nity of Alaska's, or Kevin Fryer caught up with her today. - I've been doing the people's business, right? So, what can I say? It's a really sad day for the people in New York City. These are serious charges, and Mayor Adams have to answer the question whether or not he can continue to do the work for the people of New York. I have my doubt. - But the difference between Nity of Alaska's and AOC, and all the other people that have called for the mayor to resign as of this point, is the governor actually has power to deal with? - Yes, yeah, and Errol, you said earlier that only the mayor knows if this could end his political career. Well, the governor knows too, because she could end his career herself. - Well, yes. I mean, in theory, and we're all getting up to speed on this, but the power of a governor to remove an official in New York, a lower level official, has rarely been invoked. There's like one sheriff who was removed, and that was a really, really bad guy. You have to go all the way back to 1932, when FDR was running for president, and didn't want the stain of a Tammany Hall corrupt mayor named Jimmy Walker to really impede his chances of making it to the White House. And so he let Jimmy Walker know that he was prepared to kind of go the whole nine yards and get rid of him. And Jimmy Walker got the message and resigned and left the country. I think he took his mistress and went to London. - Yeah, if I remember right. He was that kind of a guy. Oddly enough, there is a framed photo of Jimmy Walker hanging in Mayor Adams's office, which some of us thought all along was kind of an odd choice since Jimmy Walker left in disgrace. But yeah, let the writers handle that one as this season of as City Hall turns, comes to a conclusion. - So she could actually suspend him as she puts together charges. Now, these are not like formal criminal charges. Obviously, this is not like a law enforcement mechanism, but she would present him with charges. He would have an opportunity to be heard in his defense. This is actually language from the city charter. And then there would be some kind of decision rendered. That would be quite a spectacle, by the way, if this was actually to play out. But like you said, Hochl, I think, is sending a message that let's hope it doesn't come to that. - It reminds me of the federal impeachment statutes and procedures where a lot of stuff is kind of left loosey-goosey because there's an assumption that this is all intended to create a process of through which people will clearly get the message that it is time to go. So that the governor doesn't have to actually, you know, sort of go all the way through with it. But just by starting the process, give the person a chance to think. And now I think that's what all of these statements are about. It reminds me of the way that Biden was pressured out of running for reelection, by the way. - And the way that Cuomo was pressured out, right? Because there was the threat of him being impeached by the state legislature. And Cuomo hung on for as long as he could, right? I mean, he was hanging on for weeks. - I mean, the original allegations occurred, I want to say in the spring of 2021. - That's right. - And then the governor, at the time, Attorney General Tish James then released her report into the allegations and that was released on August 3rd. And then a week later, he resigned. He resigned on August 10th. - So it's a good week. - He was on the 10th and he left on the 24th, which was my birthday. It was a weird birthday president. - President, I didn't want to work that day. - But you had to. - But I was like, you know what? I can't not do this, so. - But I was thinking, and this is a discussion I was having in the newsroom, is, you know, we've had, unfortunately, the fact, we've seen so many elected officials that we cover be indicted or been mired in scandal over the years. And I'm thinking of the people that have been indicted, Shelley Silver, Dean Skelos, you know, how many of them resign? And they really don't. - Yeah, that's true. - You know, and the ones that do, then there's the Anthony Wiener, Elliot Spitzer, Andrew Cuomo. - The sexual scandals tend to lead to resignation. - Is that Eric Schneiderman resigning right away? - Eric Schneiderman resigned within hours of the New Yorker story coming out. But the corruption scandals, they stick it out. They say, "I didn't do it, I'm innocent, and I'm gonna fight these charges." - The mayor, the mayor, though, I think went even further because I was surprised today, I don't know about you guys, that he held a news conference before the U.S. attorney came out and held his news conference announcing the charges. I mean, he was really trying to get out in front of it, right? I mean, I had never seen that before. - It's online, and I'm surprised that they posted it online. I thought they were going to take it down. It was the most, one of the most disastrous press conferences I've ever seen. It was in the rain, on the sidewalk, in front of Gracie Manchin. There was no crowd control whatsoever. So a protester, I think it was Hank Newsom, who's a well-known activist in New York, showed up with a bullhorn and drowned out the mayor and all of his people. - Yeah, you almost couldn't hear that. - Over and over again, over and over again. It was raining, they were all huddled under some little makeshift tent. It just, I mean, there was no lawyer there to sort of explain anything factual about the charges he was facing or the defense that he intended to mount. It was just a disaster. - But I think it was, I mean, it's hard visually, and we can tell our listeners what it looked like. I mean, he had how many people standing behind him. The cameras certainly made it look like there was a dozen, at least probably more. - Sure, sure. - And some of the people that were standing behind him, I mean, I think some of them were billed as clergy, but some really big names in politics, and black politics in particular, you have the head of the NAACP, Hazel Duke, standing next to him. You have the Reverend Herbert Daughtry, a legendary figure in New York politics and civil rights, standing next to him, all saying that we're standing with the mayor, he's gonna fight the charges. This is an assault on us. - There were the, yeah, look, side by side with him with the Reverend Al Cogfield, right? Who has, I think he ran a pack for the mayor that came under a certain amount of scrutiny, and as a daughter who works for the mayor in the press office, there was Jackie Rowe Adams, who's a respected activist up in Harlem, but one who gets city money, you know? There were a number of people there who had financial ties. The Reverend Al Cogfield runs a couple of charter schools, so he's got a lot of different reasons to support Mayor Adams, you know, other than the purely spiritual ones that were billed as the purpose of the press conference. I mean, not to be, you know, too cynical about it, but it was, as you said, Bobby, a very strange kind of a thing, because he's asking us to believe him, and that he says, whatever you're about to hear, it's all a bunch of lies. And he said, well-- - We don't even know what it is. - None of you do. - You, the mayor, have not seen the charges. You don't know what the accusations are. None of the people who are vouching for you know what the accusations are. And none of us know what the accusations are, so how is anybody supposed to make any use of this? And then, again, the fact that it was done in such a sort of a haphazard and noisy and disruptive way, it, you know, look, if you wanna make the case that you can run the city, you have to be able to run a press conference. - And it's not like the mayor has a lot of broad support at this point. I mean, yes, he trotted some people out of that news conference, but if we're looking at people who are in positions of power and elected officials, I mean, I can count on one hand, the number of people who came out today and made supportive statements about the mayor. - Jennifer Rajkumar, not there. - Yeah, I was gonna say, I think the number is zero. - Did she make any statements? I mean, Rodney Spashot made a sort of kind of-- - She said innocent until proven guilty. - Yeah, I mean, we have heard some people say, you know, we have to, we have to wait and see, you know, he's entitled to do process. We have to let the process play out. You know, one person who kind of sang that tune was "Buildable Ozzio." Last night, he was interviewed on CNN. We played some of that on our air last night, and he's been through this himself, right? I mean, he was investigating about the investigation. - But he was never indicted. - He was not indicted, but I think maybe there is some level of empathy there that he has for Eric Adams, so he-- - Well, I mean, look, in trying to frame this for how our coverage, and I think probably most people ought to think about this, I think we have to, there are two ways to think about it. One is, yes, Eric Adams is entitled to this, that and the other, right? The presumption of innocence and a robust offense and due process, but let's ask the question, what is the city of New York entitled to, right? We're paying him. We have invested him with a tremendous amount of power and responsibility. What do we owed in response? And he has used over and over and over again, we've all got the clips and we've played these clips over and over again. One of the lower standards, I think, which is like, I'm gonna follow the law. I personally am gonna follow the law. Now, half the people that I've hired, they might be doing anything, but I told them that they should follow the law too. That's a pretty low standard, as opposed to, we want, expect, demand, and will enforce the highest standards, you know, as Kathy Holkel said in her statement, it's like, this is a privilege. We've given you, we gave you a mansion, a security detail, control of the largest police force probably in the Western world, you know? I mean, we, our children, a million school children or, you know, our safety, you know, we gave you all of that. And we expect something a little bit better than, yeah, I took a bunch of luxury flights 'cause I felt like it, but I didn't break the law. And nobody should question me until this has gone through a court process. I gotta tell you, I don't think that's what New Yorkers are gonna put up with. I think we're gonna have to do a little better than that. - We did get a glimpse of what his argument in court might be, because after he had that press conference this morning, later on in the day, he appeared outside of Gracie Mansion with his new attorney, Alex Spiro, the same attorney that is representing him in the sexual assault case that I believe we're paying for us, taxpayers. I assume Alex Spiro's representation when it comes to these criminal charges, we won't be paying for it because the mayor has fundraised for that. But they came out saying that there will be emails and they have these emails that will show that the mayor told his staff never to accept foreign money. - Oh, well, in that case, I mean, you know, it just must all be a misunderstanding, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Can I talk about my favorite part of the indictment? - Yes, and then we're probably gonna have to wrap up, but yes. - Because there's a whole section, this is towards the end, and this is not alleged to be criminal behavior, but there's a bunch of instances where the indictment shows that there were efforts by Adams and those around him to defeat scrutiny. And so it talks about when they were visited by investigators, Breonna Suggs, who was his chief fundraiser, and is not named in the indictment, but we know her to be the Adams staffer that is described in the indictment. When she gets visited by federal agents, first of all, she calls Mayor Adams five times before she answers the door. Then, in another section, it refers to Rana Abasova, who's another Adams staffer. She was part of his Office of International Affairs. She's been a longtime aide of his. She was also raided by the FBI. And then when she was interviewed by federal agents, according to the indictment, she excused herself to a bathroom and deleted the encrypted messaging applications that she had on her phone that she used. - I'm sure we're signal. - So communicate with that. - 'Cause we know the mail is to communicate via signal. And then we all remember back in November of last year, Eric Adams was accosted by federal agents on the sidewalk outside of NYU. - Accosted is too much of a straw. - Is there all the one security details? - Yeah. - I think it's a good stuff. - Yeah, yeah, approach, yeah. - Kindly asked to step aside. - When a man with a gun shows up unexpectedly and tells you to give you their phone, I think accosted is a pretty good word. Okay, so he turned over, according to the indictment, he turned over two cell phones, which were like his work phones, but not his personal cell phone, which he didn't have on him. He produced that the next day, but it was locked. It had, you know, you have to like the six digit code that you have to enter to unlock your phone. He told federal investigators that he had just changed the password and he didn't remember what it was. So he couldn't-- - As if that were really gonna, okay, so that they're gonna just be like, okay. - He himself couldn't use the phone, right? - Yeah, okay. - Well, and he said the reason he had changed the password, because he wanted to make sure nobody got in there and deleted the stuff that he wanted to make sure-- - They were trying to make triply-- - And federal investigators had access to. - And they laughed and took the phone and used whatever sorcery they've got back at FBI headquarters and, you know, cracked the phone and saw everything anyway, right? - Yeah, they can. - And by the way, I mean, I'm not actually not kidding here. The leading signal doesn't do anything as far as disguising the messages, but I thought the whole point was to create a double encrypted message that could not be found or traced. So maybe the deletion of the app wasn't like the dumbest thing, right? Or was it? - I don't know. - I think we're gonna have to wait for trial if we even get a trial. We're gonna have to wait and say-- - I mean, I'm almost schooled. If I have somebody who wants to speak in confidence, I just tell them some wayward corner of the city and just meet them. (laughing) - Watch your phones, watch your backs, watch your phones. That's what the mayor said. - Okay, so we gotta wrap up. So final thoughts. I mean, this is just an unprecedented head-spinning kind of day. I mean, what does this mean? What is the future for mayor Adams? What is the future for the Adams administration is at this point? I mean, before we went on air tonight, we learned that the Department of Investigation rolled up on the sheriff's office today and raided the sheriff's office related to a separate investigation. I mean, it just feels like-- - Well, this is not the end. - It's endless. - I mean, this is not the end, right? - Damien Williams said it's not the end. - There's no reason to believe that this is the end. Damien Williams said he's gonna continue to dig. They will hold more people accountable. So there could be more people in the administration who go down, there could be more people in the administration who quit, right? People are probably gonna continue. And we have no reason to believe that there aren't gonna be more people who continue to abandon ships. So there are people of the highest levels of government who are quitting their jobs. There's a vacuum of leadership. I mean, even now, think about all the jobs that are unfilled at the top levels of government. We have no permanent police commissioner. We're gonna have an opening for health commissioner. There's no chief counsel to the mayor. There's no corporation counsel. - School's chancellor. - The school's chancellor is leaving although I have appointed a new one. And one of those positions is gonna get filled, right? I mean-- - And what kind of person is gonna want to go work for this administration? - The mayor's counsel, the mayor's attorney, right? I mean, there's light. There's all of these problems. And you know, this is, for the investigation, it might be sort of the end of the beginning, but for the administration, it could be the beginning of the end, right? - And if the mayor's gone, there will be, I mean, we didn't even get into the succession, but there will be, the line of succession is Jimani Williams, the public advocate who would take over if the mayor steps down. And then he has to call a special election, which would happen in like 80 to 90 days. And that is gonna be one crowded special election. - And if that, I was, Jimani Williams, who's on the show with Errol tonight. And, you know, we were chatting in the green room and I was like, you know, if this happens next week, if the mayor leaves next week, you realize that that special election is gonna be called around Christmas and called around New Year's like right smack dab in the holiday season. - And I mean, how many people are gonna run in that special election? - Everyone, everyone. Like a third of the city council. (laughing) I mean, there's all, I mean, lots of-- - And it's nonpartisan and ranked choice voting. - Apparently Andrew Cuomo, the former governor, is his people are going around saying that the business community is asking him to run, which apparently is a, shall we say, generous interpretation of it? Affiction perhaps? Or it's an educated guess, I guess, on his part. - A lot of people, a lot of people in politics today are considering their futures. - A lot of people are looking into the mirror and they see a mayor looking back at them as they gaze into the mirror every morning. - Hey, maybe we'll run, we'll see, you know, why not? - Why not? - Okay. - Good matching funds. (laughing) - All right, that's gonna have to do it for this week's episode. Don't forget, you can find us all on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and send us an email at your store in your one@charter.com. You can subscribe to Off Topic, wherever you get your podcasts, and if you like what you're hearing, leave a review. Thanks to our producer Anthony Roman. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you next week. (upbeat music)
