Eric Adams Has a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You
Pundits highlight the first indictment of a sitting New York City mayor as though primarily an imputation of Eric Adams and not prosecutors who historically allow corruption to flourish when committed by their friends. Progressive prosecutors, particularly ones located in New York, move aggressively when perceived malefactors offend not the law but their politics.
Adams offered a “help is not on the way” characterization of the December meeting held with President Joe Biden regarding the illegal-alien crisis. Earlier this year, Hizzoner admitted: “The national government has turned its back on New York City.”
When you announce seeing the turned backs of the powerful, they tend to pirouette for the purpose of not ballet but bulldozing. The bulldozers showed up at 6 a.m. Thursday at Gracie Mansion, where federal agents seized Hizzoner’s cell phone and inflicted other humiliations.
These included the indictment, released later that day, which indicated a quid pro quo scheme in which Turkish interests plied money into Adams’s campaign in exchange for opening a consulate in the city without the hassles of red tape and that bureaucrat from Ghostbusters shutting down their project. It further alleges that Adams received these foreign donations through straw donors. Since New York City matches Big Apple campaign contributions, Adams, the feds say, in effect cheated the system by collecting these public subsidies for his campaign. Beyond this, they claim he received travel and accommodations gratis from these foreign well-wishers.
Adams regards the indictment as the quid pro quo in that feds punish him for criticism of them.
“I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams told the New York Post in a statement in which he vowed to fight on to serve as mayor and fight the effort for him to serve time.
More than 90 years ago, Adams’ predecessor Jimmy Walker dramatically absconded on the S.S. Conte Grande rather than face any potential charges. The differences between the mayors extend beyond the Irish exit. The flamboyant mayor brought 43 suits on an earlier trip to Europe, flouted the law by conspicuously drinking in Prohibition-era speakeasies, and frequently cavorted with dancers, to include Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Betty Compton, for whom he left his wife.
Adams, like Walker before him, upset the wrong man — the titular leader of his party. In the case of Walker, who became the national posterchild for urban corruption, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Roosevelt orchestrated his “resignation” ahead of the 1932 presidential election and that prolonged European stay. Adams, for his part, repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for passivity in dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants draining city services in New York and other metropolises. Now Biden’s Justice Department sics its prosecutors on him.
Hmmm.
This, really, comes as the first sitting mayor in the city that gave us Tammany Hall to find himself facing felony charges?
Big government results in big corruption. When a politician fast-tracks a construction project, he necessarily commits the unforgivable sin of preventing graft opportunities long enjoyed by inspectors and other lower bureaucrats. Campaign finance laws, ostensibly designed to even the playing field, instead, as demonstrated here, act as a scheme to reward cheaters and encourage, a la tax law, creative means of avoidance. And do-gooder schemes to provide matching funds to politicians, as though the people allocating public money require public money to bankroll their ambitions, represent one more opportunity for the powerful to rip off the public.
Possibly Adams committed all the offenses the Justice Department assigns to him. One cannot help but find it curious that not a mayor with a bag man grabbing millions but one accused of campaign finance violations and taking in-kind gifts finally attracted the feds to a mayor of New York City. Of course, if you believe law-breaking motivated the feds here, then Eric Adams has a bridge in Brooklyn that he, along with some Turkish gentlemen, wish to sell you.
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