US federal prosecutors have accused members of the Turkish government of pulling off a years-long influence campaign to cultivate and secure favors from Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City.
In an indictment unsealed on Thursday morning, the US attorney of New York’s southern district alleged that government officials and business leaders with ties to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, showered Adams with thousands in illegal foreign campaign donations and free or heavily discounted luxury hotel stays and flights around the world.
In exchange, the indictment claims, Adams executed various favors for the Turkish government, including pressuring a local fire official to bypass safety regulations and greenlight the opening of a consular building, so it could be ready before a visit by Erdoğan.
After that alleged intervention, a Turkish government official messaged the soon-to-be mayor calling him “a true friend of Turkey”, according to an exchange cited in the legal filing. Adams allegedly responded by calling the Turkish official “my brother”,
Adams, a 64-year-old former police officer and state lawmaker, now faces charges of wire fraud, bribery and soliciting campaign donations from foreign nationals.
“The conduct alleged in the indictment, the foreign money, the corporate money, the bribery, the years of concealment, is a grave breach of the public’s trust,” Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a press conference on Thursday.
Despite calls from a growing chorus of elected officials, Adams has vowed not to resign. The Democrat, who ran on a law-and-order message, is the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges.
“It’s an unfortunate day. And it’s a painful day. But inside all of that is a day when we will finally reveal why, for 10 months, I’ve gone through this. And I look forward to defending myself,” he said on Thursday.
Turkey’s ministry of foreign affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
The indictment is the product of just one of four apparent federal investigations led by US attorneys for the southern and eastern districts of New York into Adams associates. Other inquiries are reportedly scrutinizing police officials and senior city government officials with ties to other foreign nations.
This case focuses almost exclusively on Adams’s longstanding ties to Turkish government and business officials, a relationship that prosecutors say goes back as far as 2015 when the then borough president of Brooklyn twice visited Turkey as part of a trip arranged by government officials there.
Over the next three years, Adams visited Turkey again as well as France, Sri Lanka and China, accepting free business class tickets from Turkish Airlines that were worth more than $35,000 as part of an influence campaign organized by a Turkish government official, prosecutors assert.
Throughout this period, according to text messages cited in the case, Adams’s staffers actively solicited campaign contributions which they knew came from illegal foreign sources. And in some cases, prosecutors allege Adams, then a mayoral hopeful, was himself aware of the illegality.
In 2018, a Turkish entrepreneur, who helped arrange one of Adams’s early trips to Turkey, texted with his liaison about giving Adams an illegal donation through a straw donor with US citizenship, according to the indictment: “We’ll make the donation through an American citizen in the US … A Turk … I’ll give cash to him in Turkey … Or I’ll send it to an American … He will make a donation to you.”
The Adams liaison expressed concerns that the future mayor would not get involved in “such games”, but afterwards, the liaison asked Adams if she should pursue the illegal donations, and he directed her to do so, prosecutors allege.
Later that year, Adams met with a wealthy Turkish businessman who owned a Turkish university. Though he was a foreign national, Adams texted his liaison that the businessman was “ready to help” and didn’t “want his willing to help be waisted [sic]”.
Before Adams’s election in 2021, New York City campaign finance regulators flagged and repeatedly asked Adams’s campaign team to explain who had bundled together numerous suspicious donations for his election run, including a cluster of contributions from a fundraiser hosted by a Turkish American construction business, as the news outlet the City previously reported.
Adams’s campaign ignored the regulators’ requests and failed to disclose its bundlers.
According to the indictment, however, one of the individuals coordinating contributions for the fundraiser behind the scenes was a Turkish government official, who even sent his driver to deliver donations to the event.
Vito Pitta, Adams’s campaign counsel, and Evan Thies, a consultant who worked on Adams’s 2021 campaign, did not respond to requests for comment about the indictment.
The indictment also details how Adams received lavish benefits from Turkish nationals.
The mayor allegedly had an arrangement with Turkish Airlines in which he was upgraded to business class for free on several flights around the world. The arrangement became so routine for Adams that when his partner told him she wanted to go to Easter Island in Chile, Adams told her to check to see if Turkish Airlines flew to the country.
Adams is also alleged to have accepted free or significantly discounted stays in opulent hotels in Turkey, including the cosmopolitan suite at the St Regis hotel in Istanbul. During the same 2018 trip, Adams is also alleged to have accepted “free transportation, meals, and entertainment, including a car and driver, a boat tour to the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel, and at least one meal at a high-end restaurant”.
Prosecutors also appear to have obtained text messages that brazenly discuss the scheme. In June of 2021, for example, a Turkish airline manager asked an Adams staffer how much to charge for a last-minute flight to Turkey. The manager proposed $50. The staffer replied to charge around $1,000 to make it seem “somewhat real.
“We don’t want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media’s attention is on Eric,” the staffer wrote.
During the same trip, the staffer also inquired where Adams and his partner could stay in Turkey and the staffer suggested the Four Seasons, a luxury hotel. The staffer said it would be too expensive and the manager replied: “Why does he care? He is not going to pay. His name will not be on anything either.” The Adams staffer simply replied: “super.”
At a press conference on Thursday, US attorney Williams said the investigation was not yet concluded.
“We continue to dig and we will hold more people accountable,” he told reporters. “And I encourage anyone with information to come forward and to do so before it is too late.”
