Politics
The Mayor’s Week Gets Off to a Rough Start
Eric Adams loses his closest aide and is denied access to public matching funds. But Donald Trump said he would consider pardoning him.
Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll look at why this week didn’t start well for Mayor Eric Adams. And the suspect in the Gilgo Beach serial killings is due in court on Long Island this morning, with investigators promising they’ll announce a “significant development” after the hearing.
Credit…Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
“We had a great week last week,” Mayor Eric Adams told reporters at City Hall on Monday.
But this week? It’s not going well for Adams, and today is only Tuesday.
On Sunday, Ingrid Lewis-Martin resigned. She was Adams’s closest adviser, and he said on Monday that it was “hard to believe” that she would no longer be in the office next to his. But Lewis-Martin has been under investigation at least since September, when investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office seized her phones. Prosecutors could seek an indictment soon.
That news again front-burnered the corruption issue, which had hobbled Adams’s administration in the fall and which he had hoped to soldier through.
On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider pardoning Adams, who was indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges in September. Trump said the mayor had been treated “pretty unfairly” by federal prosecutors. Adams also said he had “had a great conversation” with Trump’s so-called border czar, and the mayor has recently opened the door to becoming a Republican again. Two of his advisers have been trying to get a ticket to Trump’s inauguration next month, although Adams said “that did not come from City Hall.”