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Off Topic/On Politics

Despite calls to resign, Mayor Adams says he’s not 'stepping down, he’s stepping up'

Broadcast on:
04 Oct 2024
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This week, Mayor Eric Adams made it clear that he has no plans to step down — even with a federal indictment hanging over his head. The exodus of his top aides continued, as advisor Tim Pearson became the fifth high-ranking member of the administration to announce their departure in just three weeks. Are the recent changes a response to a warning from Gov. Kathy Hochul? NY1 political reporters Bobby Cuza, Kelly Mena and statehouse reporter Bernadette Hogan discuss the likelihood of Adams surviving the indictment and the changes within his administration in the past week.

After that, much has been made about the mayor’s legal strategy. His lawyers tried to get the bribery charge against him thrown out and accused prosecutors of leaking details of the case. The feds, meanwhile, say it’s possible the mayor will face even more charges and that it’s likely others will be indicted. The "Off Topic" team looks at celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro’s strategy thus far and discuss how the feds still haven’t cracked the password on the mayor’s phone.

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"I'm not going to resign, I'm going to reign!" Welcome to New York One's off-topic on politics, I'm New York One reporter Bobby Kuzah. He's not going to resign, he's going to reign, or as the mayor also likes to say, he's not stepping down, he's stepping up. Either way, the mayor is making it clear he's not going anywhere, even with the federal indictment hanging over his head and even with the continued exodus of top officials like advisor Tim Pearson, who this week became the fifth high-ranking member of his team to announce their departure in just three weeks. We'll discuss and then we'll look at the mayor's legal strategy. His lawyers this week tried to get the bribery charge against him thrown out and accused prosecutors of leaking details of the case. The feds, meanwhile, say it's possible the mayor will face even more charges and likely there will be others indicted. Oh, also they haven't cracked the password on the mayor's phone. Here to talk about all of this is New York One reporter Kelly Mena, who spends many of her days with the mayor and was in court with him on Wednesday and last week too, right? Yes, both times. And you will be spending many more days in court. Well, technically the next one is until November 1st, so I have a month to rest up. And if there is a trial, yes, well, it might be in March or it might be in May, but we can talk about that. We will talk about that. Bernard Hogan is also here. She is our state house reporter and she's going to tell us if Governor Hochl is removing Mayor Adams from office as is her legal right, right? She has the power. It doesn't mean she's going to use it. Well, we'll see. OK, so we have a lot to talk about. But let's talk first about what the mayor has been up to since he wasn't indicted last week. First of all, he's been working business as usual. Nothing to see here. It was slightly modified. He doesn't do a lot more. There's not as many press conferences. He has regular meetings with the staff every morning now. Yeah, but also I was going to mention Bernardette and I both covered the mayor last weekend. He went to a bunch of churches. And on Sunday, I was with him up in the Bronx, way way northern section of the Bronx in Wakefield. And he was at a church. It's called the Immanuel Presbyterian Reformed Church. Mostly an African congregation. It's predominantly people from Ghana. They were thrilled to see Eric Adams, even though he had just been indicted like three days earlier. He got applause. They prayed over him. I talk to people outside the service afterwards. Every single person I talk to is totally behind the mayor. So this is what he does, right? When he's in trouble, when there's adversity, adversity, adversity, you were nearly there. He goes to his safe place, right? He goes to predominantly black churches. And then he had a rally this week with a lot of black churches. Basically, yeah, similar to the one he did the same day he was indicted, but on the steps of City Hall, you know, one thing about following the mayor, his base has not let him go. They support him all the time. They're true believers. And I think he likes to go back to them. It's kind of like whenever you're hurt or something you want to, you want to go back to somebody who's always going to pump you up, always going to be in your corner, kind of be your ride or die. And these voters are definitely his ride or die. They've even like, when I try to ask the mayor sometimes hard questions, they're the ones who step in front of me and will like shout me out and be like, he's a great person. Leave him alone. So I'm not surprised that he wanted to go back and get some some of that energy. And that rally was on the City Hall steps. Right. You were there, right? How big was it? Yes. It's actually they claimed it was going to be 200 people, but it was way less than that. But I would say like maybe 30 or 40, but it was a significant amount. And you know who was there that I wasn't expecting was Ingrid Lewis Martin. We know that her home recently had a search warrant executed at it. Courtney Gross did that. Great reporting on it. And the praying was supposed to be over the mayor, but they prayed over both of them. And we know that it's Chaplain Ingrid Lewis Martin. So she's very, very religious. And she believes in the power of prayer. And you know, I think the mayor that for him is he's so focused on getting reelected, even though he's been indicted and he's facing some very serious criminal charges. And I think that's the whole point of these religious rallies is to remind people that he's still running for re-election and he still needs their support if he's going to stay in office. Right. And really quickly, the distinction between the political aspect and then the legal aspect is interesting because, you know, he can continue to say, Oh, I'm running, I'm running and I'm focused on my political life. But if this case goes to trial, it does not matter what the politics are, whether he wants to run for re-election, I mean, he'll be fighting for his ability to stay out of prison. Right. So I really agree to Burns point, it's crazy to think that this man is like dismissing it almost. He like, I describe as like jumping over, it's like you could go to jail, forget about running for re-election, like you could face some very serious time and in your thinking past that as if it's like a blimp or something as if it's like something's going to go away. I'm not sure what his strategy is with Alex Spyro. Maybe he's whispering things, kind things in his ear about how it's going to go. But it, these are serious charges. There's five of them, bribery charges, the motion to dismiss is just a portion of it, you know, there's illegal donations, there's so many other parts to it. So it's, to me, most people would be worried about, more worried about staying out of jail because as long as you stay out of jail, you can always run for re-election. I don't know about you guys though. I kind of have this feeling all of a sudden this week, like maybe the mayor's going to survive, at least for a while, because when it first happened last week, we learned about it on Wednesday night. His indictment was on Thursday, he was in court on Friday, and it just felt so explosive. Like all these people were calling on him to resign. Not the most important power players like Hokel and Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, they all stopped just short of calling on him to resign, but it just felt like this was going to boil over. And then all of a sudden, over the weekend, Al Sharpton spoke, right? He called on Governor Hokel not to remove him from office. And I don't know, now it just kind of feels like things have settled down a little bit, but Bernier with the governor on Wednesday, and it seems like she's not going to remove him from office, but is kind of using it as leverage, right? Right, exactly. So I was with the governor on Wednesday and on Monday, because the governor actually has had quite a few appearances in New York City now that the mayor has been indicted, and she appears to be buying time because, look, the power that she has under the state constitution and in the New York City charter does permit her to remove an elected official, in this case, the mayor from office. It's not something that's been used. I mean, very much at all. Very much at all. I mean, more, I guess, in, well, 1930s is, I guess, the big profile case, right, with Franklin Delano, Roosevelt and Democratic mayor, Jimmy Walker, this went to a trial, but then Jimmy Walker, the mayor, resigned before FDR could make that point and make that case. But the governor is buying her time and she is trying to say to the mayor, listen, remove other people in your administration who are also under federal investigation or are also, you know, problematic. However, at the end of the day, right now, the only charges that we have seen in this indictment have to do with the mayor. None of these other individuals in City Hall have been indicted, have been charged, have been named. So it is like a kind of an interesting split screen that we're seeing where, why isn't she calling for the mayor to step down? But at the same time, again, guilty and innocent, I'm sorry, innocent until proven guilty, which is what those like Reverend Al Sharpton have stressed is important. But at the same time, and I believe Kelly's talked about this, and Errol Lewis, our great anchor in the City Hall, who have said, well, listen, Al Sharpton is the voice that comes out and says, hey, we will have a big meeting among black leaders and decide and provide hopefully a unanimous answer within the coming days, weeks about what to do with the mayor. So I think that Sharpton was almost hedging himself saying, hey, we stand with the mayor as of now, let him prove himself just so they can get credit, perhaps later on, when and if additional charges, more information comes out and they can say, hey, we've seen enough. I'm going to play a sound bite from the governor, rather. This is after Tim Pearson announced he was leading, we'll talk about that in a second, but she said this departure is a good first step, suggesting she wants other people out at City Hall. I will tell you, I am watching the situation closely, that this departure is a good first step, and we're watching to see what else unfold over the next few days. I'm just letting him know that we're moderning the situation. We expect changes, that's not a secret, and changes are beginning. So let's talk about Tim Pearson. Tim Pearson is a top advisor to the mayor. When it started out, when the mayor first started out his term, Tim Pearson seemed like he was an advisor on police matters, but he's always had a very ill-defined role, right? He became the guy in charge of the migrant crisis, or at least migrant contracting. He's also in charge of this weird kind of shadowy unit that's supposed to streamline municipal agencies, but he has been a very controversial figure, I think we could say politely. I said the other night on the air, he is a magnet for controversy. Yeah, I was going to say top advisor, top trouble makers. He's had problems even when he first started with the administration. He had that second job at the Casino in Queens. That didn't turn out well for him. Which nobody knew about. Nope. Until the New York Times broke it. Yes, very great reporting from them. And then he's had trouble ever since. It doesn't really get away from him. He has four sexual assault and retaliation lawsuits against him. He's had, under his responsibilities, has had issues with two migrant shelters and he's under investigation. He got into a fight with the security cards. Yeah, but security who asked for identification was trying to come into a migrant shelter. And so I, like I said, top advisor, top trouble maker for weeks, way before an indictment before the mayor was even indicted. There have been questions swirling around how Tim Pearson continues to work for the administration when he has so many troubling incidents surrounding him. How they're not able to put him on leave, not able to investigate on their own. This was back when Lisa Zornberg was even the mayor's chief counsel asked so many questions about this. This started also once Judge Sylvia Heinz Radix was part of the administration. There was also questions about why he was getting representation from the city for many of those cases as well. So I think Tim Pearson, leaving of all the departures. I think that one was the most expected, not whether the mayor had been indicted or not. That one was like, why does he continue to serve and get taxpayer dollars and get taxpayer money to defend himself in these lawsuits when he just creates so much trouble. And the question was, why do you continue to have this person who could create so much liability for you as your top advisor when you can easily put him on leave or do something else with him? Right. And city work is so different than private work. And that's why, you know, Pearson isn't a name or a face that New Yorkers see frequently. You know, they see the mayor and they might see some of his other top aides who show up to things, but we really weren't seeing Tim Pearson out in public until I would say that high profile migrant shelter incident. But when you talk to people in city hall, so Pearson's line is on the the city economic development corporation, which is a pseudo city agency, right? He works for them, he's on their payroll. He works for them. He's on their payroll. So the rules that he's subject to are different than if he were working for a department or an agency under city hall, you know, and branching out there. There's just a lot less sunlight, I suppose, as reporters or as the public into what EDC does. And it's, you know, so, but, but with Pearson talking to people that have dealt with him in city hall, his, his presence kind of grew over the last two years, especially when it came to the migrants and the contracts there. So dealing with budgeting, for example, certain agencies and individuals who worked on the migrant contracts or with shelters, running the shelters would have to go to Pearson first before they could even get their budgets approved by the city office of budget management, which seems like a warped way of doing things. And he kind of would hold the purse strings there and maybe blockade it. But people were also, you know, under the, under the idea that, well, he's close with the mayor. We kind of can't mess with him because he's almost off on his own. And that's also just indicative of the Adams administration and how they operate, right? Like the mayor has hired so many of his friends for key positions. And so they often are seen to buck the trend of normal city organization. And I'm not saying, oh, you know, because they're city government, they need to be so strict and work in these lines XYZ. But it's almost like they were stepping out of bounds, which is why maybe we're in the position that we're in where, you know, they were acting as if they were running their own private company. But meanwhile, it's city rules subject to a way higher threshold of scrutiny than if it was a private company. Well, and we haven't even mentioned the fact that he was among the top officials who had his phone seized and was visited by federal agents. So there is this sense that Tim Pearson, we don't know for sure, but he is probably at the center or at least deeply involved in some of these federal investigations that we have been hearing about, which I think was all the more reason people were pushing the mayor to when people talk about the mayor being, you know, encouraged to clean house. I think what they really mean is that Tim Pearson should leave and maybe Phil banks. But I don't know when Pearson announced, so this happened on Tuesday night, Monday night and we learned that he had submitted his resignation letter and I was in the newsroom and they threw me on set to talk about this. Poor you. I don't know. I was having to do work. But I, you know, I was saying like on the one hand, it seems like especially if you don't haven't been paying close attention to what's going on, it almost seemed like, oh my God, there's another person leaving, this is so chaotic, the, you know, city hall is so unstable. This is just making things worse. But on the other hand, I think this probably helps the mayor because he is distancing himself from people who could potentially be in a lot of trouble. I kind of think about it as like the mayor sitting in a sinking ship and you kind of have to throw things off to like, like clear the ship kind of idea. And so some of these people who are kind of resigning quote unquote, I feel like that's kind of the mayor. He's in this boat that's sinking and some people have to get off so that the boat will survive. You got to shed weight. Exactly. And that's the weight that he's really shedding. And I think that's, that's really the point caught up with the mayor this morning about it. And even with the school's chancellor, David, we should, we should mention that he was supposed to leave at the end of the year and then yes, and then yesterday night, we found out that he's actually only staying till the 16th, like mind you, a week ago, I was standing with them in the Bronx at a school that he had started and they were like, I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying all the way till the end of December. And in my head, I was thinking, who would not does their retirement three months ahead of time? Like the courtesy's two weeks, my man, like, it's not the big of a deal, you know? So I think it's just, that's exactly what's happening right now. And the mayor telling reporters today that he had some conversations with some other leaders and some advisors and that they thought to bring stability to the administration that they're going to be too, a chancellor and a chancellor in waiting. So they, they moved a Melissa, Avila's Ramos along. So but it sounded when they first announced that chancellor banks was going to retire at the end of the year. They made it sound like, you know, this, they had this whole plan, this succession plan. It was all, she needed three months of training. We're going to tell her everything and then out of there's like, well, there's not enough stability. We have two people in charge, which like actually is pretty crazy because the city public school system is, I mean, it's, it's had such, it's been in flux ever since before COVID, after COVID with students and families leaving the different mandates. I mean, the, the education, I guess it's not an education lobby, but the parents and those that are interested in how the city school system runs are extremely active. They, I mean, truly it's one of the most vocal populations. I mean, you're saying it, you mean, you, you, you, I was going to say don't mess with the parent and their child. That's like, I know, holy grail of like, you want voters, you want anything done? Yeah. You ask a parent that has a kid in the school system and like, it's going to be done overnight. And do I'm looking at David Banks. I mean, he really has had a decent transition as the head of the city school system compared to past chancellors who have left after causing a lot of discord, I would say, among that community. Banks has, my point is, I guess, is that Banks is someone that I think parents and teachers and the staff have come to like more so than I think they might have thought. And now the fact that he's leaving early is a huge, huge shake up compared to, again, a Tim Pearson or even deputy mayor for public safety field banks who's still working for the mayor, but those are, those are individuals that are working on the more inner working city hall. Right. They're not, they're not so public facing. By the way, I haven't checked my phone for the past half an hour. So who knows who else has departed the administration since we're taking this on Thursday afternoon? Yes. So who knows? We did ask the mayor today at Thursday morning if she no right was next, he didn't have anything to say about that. But it, you know, she's also involved in some of the federal investigations. We don't know what her, what connections she might have, but she also had her phone sees. So we'll have to see. I want to get to the, to the legal stuff, but first real quick, the mayor had his weekly off topic, as we call it, his Q and A with reporters on Tuesday. By the way, to his credit, I will say the mayor has been available. Ironically, I actually feel like he's been answering more questions than he used to since the indictment, since the indictment, I will say about the case. Yeah. He'll talk to reporters in a kind of like, like this morning, he'll be like, asking me my question so I can get along with my kind of idea. And I just feel like, well, it's not like we indicted you, you know, it's not like we made you do these things. Anyway. So the Q and A on Tuesday, Kelly was there and usually it happens in the blue room at City Hall, which is the ceremonial room. And there's the dais with a bunch of the mayors, top advisors and deputy mayors and they all answer questions Tuesday was a little different. He came out into the City Hall Rotunda by himself, just with his posters of all of his wins. And how would you describe the, the Q and A? He was defiant? It's defensive. I mean, he, he already knew that all the questions were going to be about his indictment and how City Hall's running and is he a distractive and should he resign? And you know, I spoke to some other deputy mayors, you know, afterwards and I said, what did you think about it? You weren't there. And some told me they were like, wasn't it great that he was standing there by himself? It was such a great show. And I was like, you know, and I think the opposite is true. It's like, nobody's standing with you in this moment of like, you're saying challenges and everything shouldn't the opposite be true? You want as many as possible? Like, I would have filled the dias with like all these people and been like, look, we're doing it. Here's all my people and they're standing by me. Well, also, isn't it the case that legally he's barred through the bail terms from discussing the case with individuals that he works with or family members? Yeah. Well, they said they were going to provide a list, but anybody named in the indictment, he can't speak to about it, but because he's the mayor, he gets special. I'm talking about the case, but he can like he can talk to them, but he can't talk about the case. Yeah. The facts of the case, the specifics about the case, but in general, you know, I feel like he should have had some people standing behind him, just optics wise. When you have people behind you, it shows that they're supporting you in some type of way, not in his legal troubles, but like we continue to to be behind him and we think that he should say in the position that we're talking about legal troubles is the perfect segue into our next segment. We're going to take a break, but then we'll tell you what happened inside the courtroom this week where a prosecutor said it's possible Adams will get hit with even more charges. Here's the deal. 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That's life unlimited. This week, Mayor Adams began mounting his defense to this federal indictment, both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion, with his attorney, Alex Spyro holding a news conference on Monday where he attempted to discredit the government's case against him. So Kelly, you were in the courtroom on Wednesday and it seems like they're kind of throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and a big piece of it is this idea that the government leaked information to the press and is it that therefore the whole case should be thrown out? I'm not even clear on what sort of law the government may have broken. The leaking of the documents and some information, they want them to be sanctioned for their misconduct, kind of like either put violations or something in place so that that doesn't happen again. Almost like a warning, like stop doing this, but you know, the way reporters get their information could be through so many avenues in those exhibits that Spyro provided. It was articles from the New York Times and the Daily News, and you know, it might not even be anybody in the Southern District of New York that's giving that information. It's unclear. So that to me, that argument wasn't, so yesterday's court proceeding was a pre-trial conference. We don't talk, they don't argue the motions there. They're not arguing anybody's guilty or innocent. They're not arguing what should happen in the case. This is basically a procedural meaning where they set timelines for arguing disputes in the case. And Spyro was pushing for the trial as soon as possible. The most important thing that a pre-trial conference does is set a trial date. And that's the most important part. And also the prosecution lets the judge know what they're going to present. Can you give us an idea, summarize it? So they mentioned lots of things that I thought were interesting, which is they're going to bring up GPS location, a lot of data that they were able to get. Hotel records, flight records, credit card records, bank statements, records that were created to show that the mayor paid for things when he didn't. All these records, they still have to start accumulating and putting it into order so that they can provide it to the defense to Alex Spyro so that he can prepare for trial. But they said that it's going to be in three big batches. The first batch is going to be all those electronic statements that they have. The second one is going to be some witness statements. They also mentioned all these witnesses that they still have to get statements from, that they're going to provide to the defense as well. Two different types of witnesses. Citizens who saw things that were happening either in Burrow Hall or at the mayor's office and other ones that can speak to the actual facts in the case like this light happened on this day. This meeting happened on this day. And then the other part that they provided, which was the really big piece of information was we're basically not done yet, which is we have, we most likely, the words were most likely provide have more charges for the defendant, which was the mayor, and likely will or possibly more charges for the mayor, and likely more indictments as in other defendants will be included. That's all they could give. They said that the investigation hasn't concluded, but they're not going to give any formation out and they're moving as quickly as they can. Right. And you wonder what the appetite was having this conversation yesterday. What if at all, if there is any appetite on part of the mayor to settle? But it seems like they're gung ho on a trial, which appears to be more risky. I mean, you'd have to convince, you have to convince a jury that you did not do something. Um, I mean, it's, it's just really interesting to see if this ends up going to trial to see a sitting mayor go in front of, in front of a court and I should, sorry, I should mention Spyro was so aggressive about the timeline, like the judge would be like, okay, the normal standard time for providing the slavery to defenses two weeks, the assisting us attorney said, well, we need four because we have all this information we need to give. We need to, we have so much, we have to collect some, like actually put it into database. And Spyro's like, well, I only need a week to review it. Everything was, I only need a week to review. And it felt like so quick when you think about the extensive information involved, the real serious charges, everything was like, I can, I can go to court right away. I can go to trial right away. It seemed like he was just overly confident about the case. And then at one point, he even said, if most of the case survives his bribery, his motion to dismiss bribery charges in the case, which he believes is the majority of the case. Like that's the real heart of the cases. These bribery charges that, that could pro quo, that the mayor got these flight upgrades, these gifts, these hotel stays to help Turkish consulate with their skyscraper and other things like that. So it was fascinating to see him constantly. Anytime is asked by the judge, like, what do you think? It was like, I'm going to give you my opinion and then I want to go to trial. I want to go to trial. I want to go to trial. This news conference on Monday, the attorney Alex Spira, where, I mean, he talked about all the reasons why this is a weak case. He talked about the fact that there's no quid pro quo, in part because some of the conduct happened while he was Bruno President, before he was the mayor. He talked about how this is all based on the testimony of Rana Abasova, who, you know, he said is a liar and she destroyed evidence. And so you can't believe her. He talked about the flight upgrades. And this is my favorite part. He said that's sort of just a gratuity and it's totally normal for politicians. Listen to this gratuities are not federal crimes. Curtices to politicians are not federal crimes. Congressmen get upgrades. They get corner suites. They get better tables at restaurants. They get free appetizers. They have their iced tea filled up. That's just what happens. Okay, let's talk about my favorite part of the whole case, though, which is the fact that the mayor's phone was turned. He turned over his. Well, first of all, when they got him in the SUV back in November, the federal agents, they took two of his work phones, I guess we could call them. The mayor, only the following day, produced his personal phone, which he said he had changed the password to and could not remember the password yesterday on Wednesday in court. We learned the government has not yet cracked his password, so they haven't been able to get into his phone, which presumably has a lot of information on it that they're interested in. So we had a whole conversation in the newsroom on like, how hard is it to crack a phone? And now that I'm thinking about it, I remember Scott and even saying, I don't know if we'll ever get into the phone, which means to me in my head, we all have iPhones, right? And we're like, how hard could it be? You've had the phone for almost a year. Why would you tell that in a courtroom basically being like, this is our one linchman. We can't get into it and actually it's really hard, as Bobby mentioned to me, that's not as easy as you would think. Yeah, the US Attorney's office has this like device that tries to crack the, I don't know, I mean, I don't even know how it works. I guess there's like an algorithm that cycles through every possible password combination, which with a six digit password combination. It's infinite combinations, apparently sometimes they can crack into phones in like a matter of days or even hours and then sometimes it takes years. How did they know though, like with all the phones, because we were looking at it's like in this like box, how do they know that they cracked it? Does it ping? Does it look like an alarm goes off? Like I can't even. So somewhere at the US Attorney's office in lower Manhattan right now, the mayor's phone is sitting in a box and they're just cycling through passwords, trying to get into it. But they did say that that was an important part of the case, didn't they? Yes, that they really need that information and that's kind of why they said it because it was part of like the judge saying like how you have to establish all this stuff before you go to trial and they basically offered it up saying like one piece we need is this phone to, we need the information on this phone and the way it works is when you get a warrant, you can only get information that is pertaining to that warrant. So it's not like they can go into the phone some other way or go through another, they have to go through the way they got the warrant. So that that limits their scope of what information they can get off the phone. But I just think that it was so wild that we're almost a year since they had that phone and they haven't been able to get into it. So yeah. Right. And you'd have to imagine, I mean, that also is what the case or the defense is resting a lot of their confidence on, which is that we have the text, we have the emails that will exonerate the mayor and show he wasn't the person soliciting donations, wasn't the person asking for favors. It was this lowly aid. A lot of this has been show and tell. It depends on whether or not the defense can back it up and has, has the money because at the end of the day, Damien Williams, all of these prosecutors, they're going at the king. If you go out the king, you best not miss because it would be highly embarrassing, but also with all of this talk on the mayor's part saying I'm being targeted or, you know, in so many words saying that he's being targeted by the Biden Harris DOJ, Department of Justice. The way that that Damien Williams and his team can deny that show it's false is by having the evidence and saying, listen, we didn't just go after this guy because we're on a political mission from on high. We're going on after this man because XYZ, we're going to prove it in court. All right. We've got to wrap up. I kind of said earlier that I think maybe the mayor can weather this. The problem is what happens when another indictment drops, right? It's like there could be much more turbulence to come and that's just going to increase the sense of instability and maybe we'll get more calls for him to resign. I think more charges would be worse and more indictments because that's somebody else versus more charges as like it piles on to the mayor. Yeah. All right. That is going 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 yourstoryny1@charter.com. You can subscribe to Off Topic wherever you get your podcast and if you like what you're hearing, leave us a review. Thanks to our producer, Anthony Roman, we will see you next week. (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]