NYC Mayor Adams, campaign served subpoenas in federal investigation

NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors investigating New York Mayor Eric Adams and his 2021 campaign have served a new round of grand jury subpoenas in their long-running corruption inquiry, issuing them to Adams himself, to City Hall and to his election committee, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

The three subpoenas were served in July and seek an extensive range of materials, including text messages, other communications and documents, two of the people said.

The subpoenas contain similar language and seek information in a number of areas, including travel by the mayor, his aides and others, as well as fundraising. They appear likely to sweep in information related to some aides to the mayor and people who worked both in City Hall and on Adams’ 2021 campaign, the people said.

The new subpoenas came nearly nine months after the corruption investigation first entered public view, meaningfully altering the city’s political landscape. Since then, the mayor has become a political target, with sagging approval ratings and at least three challengers in the 2025 Democratic primary.

The full scope of the investigation remains unclear. But it has focused at least in part on whether Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations and pressured the Fire Department to sign off on Turkey’s new high-rise consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns. It also has examined free flight upgrades Adams received from Turkish Airlines.

Adams has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and maintained that he and his campaign have scrupulously followed the law.

Two lawyers representing him and his campaign said in a statement Thursday that over the past nine months, they have conducted their own investigation into the conduct that they believe is the focus of the federal inquiry.

Both lawyers in the past two decades oversaw public corruption prosecutions for the same federal prosecutor’s office that is now investigating the mayor. Their examination has included “an evaluation of campaign documents, an analysis of tens of thousands of electronic communications, and witness interviews,” the statement said.

“To be clear, we have not identified any evidence of illegal conduct by the mayor,” the lawyers, Brendan R. McGuire and Boyd M. Johnson III, said in the statement. “To the contrary, we have identified extensive evidence undermining the reported theories of federal prosecution as to the mayor, which we have voluntarily shared with the U.S. attorney.”

The lawyers said they were responding to the new subpoenas.

“We continue to look forward to a prompt and just resolution of this investigation,” they said.

The subpoenas, which have not been previously reported, also came amid some indications that the public corruption investigation may be nearing its conclusion.

Prosecutors and FBI agents have recently been contacting lawyers for witnesses they interviewed this year with follow-up questions to clarify certain details, and they have sought to expedite interviews with some other witnesses, four people with knowledge of the outreach have said.

Spokespeople for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and the FBI, which are conducting the investigation, declined to comment.

Neither Adams nor any other administration officials or campaign staffers has been accused of wrongdoing, and it is possible that the investigation could conclude without charges being brought against the mayor or any of his aides.

His predecessor, Bill de Blasio, endured lengthy and well-publicized federal and state criminal investigations focused on his campaign fundraising, but those ended with no charges. He won reelection in 2017.

In the federal investigation of de Blasio, at least one senior official from City Hall and one from his campaign received grand jury subpoenas, a development that prompted his chief counsel, Maya Wiley, to issue a statement at the time saying “City Hall has been subpoenaed.”

Those subpoenas were issued nearly a year before that investigation concluded in an unusual announcement by federal prosecutors from the Southern District – the same office investigating Adams – that harshly criticized de Blasio.

The mayor’s spokesperson, Fabien Levy, noted that Adams, a retired police captain, had a career in law enforcement before politics and “has been clear over the last nine months that he will cooperate with any investigation underway.”

“Nothing has changed,” he added.

It is unclear what prompted the new round of subpoenas. Grand juries operate in secret and federal law bars prosecutors and federal agents from speaking about subpoenas or the materials or testimony that the subpoenas seek.

The investigation into Adams and his campaign began in 2021, before Adams took office as mayor, and continued in secret until this past fall, two people with knowledge of its origin said.

It may have been effectively dormant during some of that time, but later heated up, with FBI agents and prosecutors gathering enough evidence to persuade a federal judge to sign several search warrants that were executed on the same morning in November of last year. The warrants included one for the Brooklyn home of Brianna Suggs, who was then the mayor’s chief fundraiser.

The agents who searched her home emerged with two laptop computers, three iPhones and a manila folder bearing Adams’ name, according to a search warrant and other documents obtained by The New York Times.

The warrant made clear that the raid was part of a broader federal investigation involving the Turkish government.

On the same day as the search of Suggs’ home, FBI agents also searched the homes of Rana Abbasova, an aide in Adams’ international affairs office, and Cenk Öcal, a member of his mayoral transition team and former executive at Turkish Airlines, from which Adams received free flight upgrades.

Adams, an avid traveler, has praised the airline, telling a Turkish pro-government publication that the airline “is my way of flying.”

When Adams was Brooklyn borough president, Abbasova served as his liaison to Brooklyn’s small Turkish community, a position that no longer exists in the Borough Hall of Adams’ successor, Antonio Reynoso.

Just days after the searches, FBI agents stopped Adams outside an evening event at New York University, asked his security detail to step aside, joined him inside his SUV and presented him with a warrant to seize his electronic devices.

While Adams has often noted that he urges his staff to “follow the law,” his campaign has been dogged by repeated straw-donor investigations that have resulted in criminal charges, though he has not been accused of involvement. Several senior members of his administration have also been the subject of a wide range of investigations.

In July, the city’s campaign finance board released a draft audit of the mayor’s 2021 campaign that described an operation marked by disorganization and opacity. The campaign failed to disclose who paid for 158 fundraisers, reported expenditures which – based on the documentation provided so far – were not campaign-related, accepted anonymous contributions and exceeded spending limits. The draft audit was first reported by Gothamist.

Last September, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Eric Ulrich, Adams’ former senior adviser and former Buildings Department commissioner, accusing him of taking bribes. That case is pending.

Timothy Pearson, another senior adviser to Adams, has been sued four times this year in cases that accuse him of sexual harassment and is facing two investigations by the city’s independent anticorruption agency.

And in February, the FBI searched two homes owned by Winnie Greco, another senior adviser to the mayor, in a separate investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.