While now-former mayor Eric Adams was still in office in 2024, he was slapped with charges of bribery and soliciting illegal campaign funding by the Department of Justice. The charges were federal charges stemming from the 2021 campaign for mayor of New York City, but they were dropped the next year when Donald Trump replaced Joe Biden in the White House and ordered the DOJ to dismiss the case. At the time, Adams claimed that the charges were baseless; they were only filed, he contended, because he dared to speak out against the lack of federal funding to assist illegal immigrants who were overwhelmingly bused to New York City by the Biden administration. However, a citizens’ watchdog group now wants Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg to pursue a new campaign finance case against Eric Adams, this time at the state level.
Curtis Sliwa ran unsuccessfully against Adams for mayor in 2021. He has since found a better employment opportunity as one half of 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program. He explained for listeners how the finance scheme fleeces state campaign finance laws: “It’s called ‘straw-donor purchases’. You get eight dollars for every one dollar when you run a citywide campaign, if it is a person who lives in New York City and donates… That’s how you can [afford to] run for office, and he basically was taking Turkish money, and Turkish money was being invested in Turkish-American businesses, and the owners and operators were telling their employees, I tell you what- make the max, $250. Write him a check, it’s Eric Adams, and I’ll give you $500 in cash, right. These guys didn’t even know who Eric Adams was!”
Curtis then explained how the scheme unraveled: “So now the Campaign Finance Board starts making calls, because they’ve got to do integrity checks- none of these people knew Eric Adams! Then they call Eric Adams, you know the committee that runs the campaign- nobody ever answered back, and that’s why he got indicted.”
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