Is anybody following the charges in the Eric Adams corruption case? I’m overwhelmed at work and can’t look into it in detail. Is it true he’s charged over airplane ticket upgrades back in 2018-19? Or anything else?
I detest corruption but is this real corruption? Or political persecution?
I don’t like Adams, obviously. But I’m interested in what’s actually happening.
Haven’t tracked the exact details. I figure:
-Nobody gets to be mayor of NYC without some shady dealings. It’s part of the vetting process, to make sure they don’t get anybody who can’t be kept on a leash, or have a killswitch to get rid of them if they do anything threatening to whatever entrenched, unelected bodies are actually in charge.
-He went off script about the migrant thing, so now they’re using the killswitch.
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https://peterhalligan.substack.com/p/nyc-mayor-adams-indicted-by-grand
Halligan says the charges are still under seal. So we don’t get to know what they are.
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The charges are out now. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/26/nyregion/eric-adams-indictment-charges-annotated.html
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Thanks, but paywalled. Will poke around and find elsewhere.
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Every indictment, from Menandez to Trump to Hunter Biden to Eric Adams are legitimate. You can’t be indicted unless a grand jury of your peers have read and agreed to the facts of the case — after which you’re then indicted and tried by a jury of your peers. The “victimization” cry is always a distraction, which obviously works, since we’ve seen Trump use it to great effect.
This is America. You have access to lawyer, to a defense, and to your day in court. Then you have access to appeals until you get to the Supreme Court. If we approach each case like this, we’d stop being distracted by politicians’ use of victimization rhetoric to gather sympathy (and fundraising) while they get away with murder. In this case, terrible corruption.
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Where do you think the expression about ham sandwiches came from? I promise I didn’t invent it.
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I know, but then everyone can use to discredit whatever charges against them. I prefer to look at every case on its merit. Otherwise, nothing is real.
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That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. The tendentious retelling by the NYTimes is no use. I saw screenshots of what is purported to be the actual indictment, and it’s shocking how pathetic the charges listed there are. I don’t know if it’s a fake, though. It might be completely fake.
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“New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting a political contribution from a foreign national, according to an indictment that was unsealed on Thursday “
So… they apparently didn’t have any sex-pest charges to use on him, for once. That’s interesting.
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full text at npr:
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/26/nx-s1-5129557/read-indictment-charges-eric-adams-new-york-mayor
1: accepted and solicited luxury travel from the wrong people, foreign nationals. Alleges that they expected favors from him. Oddly, does not allege that he did those favors.
2: Illegal campaign contributions through “straw” donors (ie donating through someone else’s name)… exactly what ActBlue was caught doing for the entire freaking democrat party not that long ago, but that just disappeared into the ether didn’t it? Because the “straw” donors were all like “well, I’m a democrat, what do I care if somebody in China donated $2500 to a dem campaign pretending to be me?” and nobody wanted to press charges. Because lefties are totes OK with fraud as long as it’s for a good cause.
3: Adams is alleged to have used those straw-donor contributions to collect “matching” campaign funds from the state of NY to the tune of $10mil
4: Unnamed “Turkish Official” gave him free airfare on Turkish Airlines.
5: He conspired with others to avoid disclosing any of this to the public. (coughHunterBidenlaptopcoughcough)
6: Ah, here’s the quid pro quo with “Turkish Official”: Turkish consular building in NYC gets to bypass fire inspection.
7: Not an allegation, just an explanation of the matching funds program
8: Allegation that Adams knowingly abused the matching funds program
9: Accepted illegal donations from foreign nationals.
10: Free business class plane tickets to Turkey.
11: enumerates, but does not name, the other people involved in the airfare-solicitaion-scheme
12: More on Turkish airfare. For adams and for his friends and relatives.
13: Thousands of dollars in free travel from Turkish Airlines (yay redundancy), pointing out that he was flying way out of his way in order to make connecting flights in Istanbul so he could stick with TA. I’m not seeing how this makes sense as a separate item, but hey I’ve read weirder legal documents.
14: Accepted free and discount luxury travel benefits from Turkey again. For self and companions. We get a picture of the hotel room.
15: did not fill out the proper disclosure forms for all this travel.
16: Created fake paper trails instead.
17: Granted “a political request” from turkish official, but doesn’t specify what that request was.
18: Knowingly accepted straw donations.
19: Knowingly accepted straw donations.
20: Arranged for illegal contributions from Turkish nationals.
21: More free luxury travel.
22: More free luxury travel.
23: More free luxury travel.
24: Failure to report luxury travel.
25: Soliciting unlawful foreign campaign contributions.
26: ditto
27: gosh this is getting boring. Failure to disclose
28: soliciting donations from “businessman” who happens to be Turkish, telling him how to launder 10k into separate 2k donations.
29: accepting “support” from Turkish official.
…and it goes on in the same vein. As far as I can tell, all Turkey got for these piles of cash and gifts was… exemption from onerous NYC building inspections.
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So… I have questions.
Obviously, I’m 100% in favor of investigating and prosecuting ALL illegal campaign contributions and anything that looks like a bribe, regardless of political affiliation. We should start with our current president and his entire family, and just work our way down from there, to every member of congress, every federal judge, the whole enchilada.
But I’d like to know…
How many top-tier NY officials are *not* accepting free gifts like this? How many new buildings in NYC pass inspection *without* some propinas, or bakshish or whatever, and if any can be found, how long did that process take, compared to those who did? Because this smells like something that is likely *completely standard practice* for most big cities. That doesn’t make it right. But if that was the problem prosecutors were trying to address, we would be talking about a much, much larger number of people indicted, and absolutely huge numbers of functionaries getting fired or taking an early retirement. I see no evidence of it.
How many big-city mayors are *not* accepting very similar bribes?
How many politicians are *not* receiving straw campaign donations?
How many politicians are not filling out the appropriate disclosure forms?
How many politicians are *not* campaigning on funds illegally donated by foreign nationals?
We are mostly talking, here, about politics at the level of large cities, states, and the fedgov. But given the activities of Soros types, smaller urbs aren’t immune, and of course I’d love to know how many of these towns getting inundated with migrants… how many of their city and county officials have recently taken out home equity loans, which were then very kindly paid off by unknown third parties.
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Count one: Conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery and to receive contributions by foreign nationals
Count two: Wire fraud
Count three: Solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national
Count four: Solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national
Count five: Bribery
–apologies for haunting the combox. We have some weather out in the Gulf, we are in the compulsively-checking-for-updates phase of things, and then de-stressing by checking all the other sites we like to visit…
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The previous mayor’s wife embezzled $850M of taxpayer money through her fake mental health NGO.
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See, there’s where Adams went wrong. He didn’t let his wife, kids, siblings, inlaws, and close personal friends play bagman for him.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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