Former Federal Prosecutor Says DOJ Has ‘Treasure Trove’ Of Evidence Against Eric Adams

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherkasky told Fox Business host Neil Cavuto on Thursday that the Justice Department had amassed “a mountain” of evidence against Democratic Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.

Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed a five-count indictment of Adams Thursday, centered around alleged campaign contributions from Turkey and bribery. Cherkasky said that even though proving a “quid pro quo” might be difficult, federal prosecutors had a lot of evidence against the former New York Police Department captain.

“The DOJ really unveiled a treasure trove, a mountain in fact, of evidence against Mayor Adams. The indictment itself, though, kind of lays out a few different categories of what is described as criminal conduct,” Cherkasky told Cavuto. “Just a moment ago, you talked bribery, quid pro quo. Well, Mayor Adams seemed to have been getting quite a bit of money in the form of campaign donations and otherwise from Turkish officials that led to him being accused of rushing along the Fire Department to approve the Turkish house, a building that the Turks were building because a president was coming. That’s a pretty direct quid pro quo, but there’s not a lot more than that.”

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“More troubling for Mayor Adams is the fact he was obtaining these donations from what they call straw donations,” Cherkasky continued. “So, instead of receiving this money illegally straight from these foreign entities they had individuals who essentially were allowed to donate smaller amounts, give that money, and then use those small donations to execute the matching funds program and through that got over $10 million in matching funds from public funds. That seems to be the biggest issue here, because there might be issues with that bribery charge and the quid pro quo that went along with it.”

The DOJ accuses Adams of seeking contributions from Turkish donors since he served as Bronx Borough president, and claimed that he committed wire fraud by securing the matching funds with illegal contributions. Cherkasky said that Adams could have made things worse for himself.

“There are allegations that Mayor Adams tried to make it more difficult for the FBI to access his phone when that was subpoenaed and had to be turned over, saying he had forgotten his password, so that could be an aggravating factor.,” Cherkasky said.

Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].