Even during times when Mayor Eric Adams hasn't been surrounded by scandals involving his campaign's fundraising, this administration's relationship to the press has been a contentious one. Adams hates taking questions from the media so much that in October, he began limiting reporters to a weekly "off-topic" press conference where the mayor would answer just a few select questions (and often not even bother calling on Hell Gate, or even smaller, more local publications, like the New York Times).
Since Thursday's FBI raid of the home of his chief campaign fundraiser Brianna Suggs, however, the mayor has ducked almost every public appearance where he would usually take "on-topic" questions from the press, and he's now even canceled his weekly "off-topic" press conference, which usually takes place on Tuesday.
His deputy mayor for communications, Fabien Levy (who earns an annual salary of $250,000 to do not very much communicating), told the Daily News that the mayor wouldn't be taking questions on Tuesday because "the office is technically closed" on Election Day.
That's a weird excuse, because last year on Election Day, Adams held a whole press conference where he took questions and everything. Levy said Adams will be talking to reporters later in the week. But man, between his wild rush back from D.C. on the morning of the raid and now the cancellation of his weekly press conference, this does not give off the appearance of a mayor comfortable with what's coming out about his campaign.
So what more have we found out about the FBI raid of the home of Brianna Suggs, the 25 year old who by all accounts ran the fundraising operation of Eric Adams's 2021 campaign? Not a whole lot. A New York Times dive into Suggs reveals an ambitious young woman with close connections to many of the important figures in Eric Adams's orbit, like Ingrid Lewis-Martin, but who was deeply inexperienced when it came to running a multimillion dollar fundraising apparatus.
That campaign, it was revealed over the weekend, took money from a Turkish construction company, KSK, whose owner had been implicated in bribery schemes in 2007 and 2008. As for that cash, the CITY reports that staff of New York City's Campaign Finance Board had repeatedly asked Adams's campaign about those donations, which were allegedly made by KSK employees, some of whom now state that they never made those donations at all.
On Friday, the Messenger reported that an NYPD squad car had been sent to Suggs's Crown Heights residence the night before the raid, a move the NYPD defended as routine, but that left former federal agents baffled.
While the mayor's schedule for today has no appearances where the press can ask him questions, he has still been running around town. He voted over the weekend (unannounced), and yesterday, during an appearance at the Purpose Life Church in Brooklyn, he reiterated his claims that God told him he would be mayor, that children are picking up fentanyl off the street, and that God is continuing to speak with him regularly. In the world, he said, "there's a demonic energy, and it's time to pray."
We pray that at some point the mayor will begin answering some very important questions regarding his campaign donors.
Some links, in full transparency:
- A budtender at the Housing Works dispensary who had been picked up by police and sent to Rikers in part due to old warrants for marijuana possession has been released on bail.
- Also some good news if you want to become a budtender: A union is now offering training classes to become one.
- Revel is bailing on its moped fleet.
- Donald Trump is taking the stand today at his civil trial in Manhattan.
- The Second Avenue subway line extension up to Spanish Harlem is actually happening, thanks to a cash infusion from the federal government. As part of the same spending announcement, the feds announced a bunch of construction money is coming to improve train service from New York to D.C., but nothing like a high-speed rail system (yet).
- Ethiopian Tamirat Tola and Kenyan Hellen Obiri won the New York City Marathon, but the true winners are the people who wake up early enough to ride bikes on the course before the race.
- Here are the statewide ballot initiatives you can vote on tomorrow, if you're one of the few who is bothering to vote.
- New York's exclusive membership clubs are boring and expensive.
- The mayor's plan to allow limitless electric taxis has already been slapped with a lawsuit, as car carnage continues on city streets.
- George Santos, please never leave us.
- Instead of community green space, how about more parking for cops?
- And finally, everyone, just keep running:
