Federal prosecutors have charged Eric Adams, the vociferous Mayor of the largest city in the United States, with bribery and campaign financing irregularities. One of the charges relates to a trip he made to India.
The charges listed out on Thursday state that in 2016 after purchasing economy-class tickets for himself and his domestic partner to India through Turkish Airlines, he accepted upgrades to business class which prosecutors claim are valued nearly at $13,000 he failed to disclose receiving in his official filings.
Prosecutors assigned a value of $100,000 to the sums he illegally benefited from. The indictment does not mention anyone linked to India; it is focused on his alleged connections to Turkiye.
Most of the charges, including the one over the trip to India, deal with the time he was the President of the city's Brooklyn borough prior to becoming mayor in 2022.
Adams, who is African-American – only the second from the community of the city's 110 Mayors – is a Democrat. Yet he has been at odds with the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who he slammed for their border policies that let in more than 12 million illegal immigrants overwhelming New York and other cities.
In a statement in which he declared his innocence, he pointed to his criticism of the federal government's inaction on "its broken immigration policies."
On a day he was set to lead a group of Mayors in protest over the fallout of illegal immigration, federal agents launched a search of the house of his campaign finance official, forcing him to scrap the protest and turn back to New York.
He is also a careerist politician who has served in the past as a police captain and also tough on crime, thus eliciting criticism from some circles of the party's left and poles apart from some of the soft stances Harris had once advocated for the downtrodden.
The Turkish government, businesses, educational institution, and local administrations allegedly gave him free hospitality and channeled campaign contributions illegally to him through third parties.
In addition to the trip to India, he is charged with accepting free tickets, upgrades, or hospitality for visits to Turkiye, China, Hungary, and Sri Lanka.
In return, among other things, he allegedly facilitated a fire department clearance for the Turkish Consulate tower - which stands at 36 stories - according to an indictment.
Charges against him were dropped two days after Turkiye's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan severely criticized the West in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly.
The city of 8.25 million people has seen weeks of unrest after several high-ranking officials, including Police Commissioner and schools Chancellor, resigned amid investigations into their activities.
Federal prosecutors have prosecuted foreign meddling in U.S. politics that occurred in the New York area.
Early this month, Linda Sun, a former top aide to Governor Kathy Hochul, was arrested and charged with secretly serving China.
In May, high-ranking Senator Bob Menendez, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was convicted on bribery charges related to his illegal alliance with Egypt and Qatar.
He remembered visiting the country at a flag-hoisting ceremony in India commemorating the country's Independence last month.
He said: "I recall in my trip to India, and the most significant part of that trip that I remember, I remember watching the last footsteps of our leader, Gandhi, and where the assassin took his life, and how we have responsibility and obligation to continue those footsteps."
