Federal agents raided the homes of at two high-ranking officials within New York City mayor Eric Adams’ administration, according to reports.
On Thursday, local news outlet the City cited sources familiar with the situation who said that federal agents carried out the raid on early Wednesday in the homes of Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor, and Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety.
Federal agents simultaneously showed up at Wright’s Hamilton Heights townhouse in Manhattan at 5am, and at Banks’s home in Hollis, Queens, one source told the outlet. The source added that federal agents confiscated both Wright’s and Banks’s phones and laptops.
David Banks, the fiance of Wright and brother of Phil Banks, declined to comment on the raid to the City and did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Instead, Banks, who was appointed schools chancellor by Adams, told the City: “Today is the first day of school and I am thrilled.”
In 2014, Philip Banks abruptly resigned as the New York police department’s chief of department amid a federal bribery investigation in which federal agents uncovered evidence that he had accepted thousands of dollars in free meals and sports tickets, per the City’s report.
The purpose of the alleged raid on Wednesday remains unclear. The Guardian has contacted the FBI and Adams’s office for comment.
In November 2023, federal agents raided the Crown Heights home in Brooklyn of Eric Adams’s top campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. Earlier in 2023, the City reported that Adams and his campaign team ignored city regulators’ requests on multiple occasions to disclose the identities of more than 500 supporters behind $300,000 in campaign contributions.
A few days after Suggs’s home was raided, federal agents seized at least two phones and an iPad belonging to Adams. Speaking to the New York Times at the time, sources familiar with the matter said that the FBI investigation revolved around whether Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign “conspired with the Turkish government and others to funnel money into its coffers”.
Since taking office, Adams has appointed many of his close friends to top positions in the city.
In addition to appointing David Banks and his fiance, Wright, as public schools chancellor and deputy mayor, respectively, Adams – a former NYPD captain himself – hired his longtime friend Lisa White as the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for employee relations with an annual salary of more than $241,000.
Adams’s administration has faced backlash on a variety of issues, including his blocking of a ban on solitary confinement last July after at least 26 people died in New York City jails since January 2022.
“Each day Mayor Adams’ administration shows how little respect it has for the laws and democracy,” Shirley Limongi, city council spokesperson, said in a statement at the time, adding: “It sets more hypocritical double standards for complying with the law that leave New Yorkers worse off.”
Additionally, reports in June revealed that NYPD complaints under Adams have reached the highest level since 2012, with rising stop-and-frisk encounters as well as officers wearing morale patches on their vests that contain possible white supremacist imagery.
Adams, who has issued anti-immigration sentiments multiple times, has also faced controversy over his comments on asylum seekers, whom he described as “excellent swimmers” who could help fix the city’s lifeguard shortage on its beaches.
In March, Adams was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a woman in 1993 and demanding a sexual favor in exchange for his help advancing her career in the city’s transit police department. Adams has denied the accusations.
