Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday fiercely denied the existence of an internal City Hall list aimed at fast-tracking fire system approvals for major developers that is reportedly being eyed by the FBI in its probe of his 2021 campaign.
The so-called “Deputy Mayor of Operations (DMO) List” was first created by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2021 and continued under Adams’ administration when he took office in 2022, according to published reports. The list was used to help major developers cut to the front of the line in getting needed approvals for construction projects from the FDNY.
One of those big developers is reportedly the government of Turkey, which asked Adams for help in getting the Fire Department to greenlight a new Turkish consulate building in Midtown Manhattan after he had won the Democratic mayoral nomination but was still Brooklyn Borough President in 2021.
The incident, where the mayor contacted former Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro to look into speeding up approvals for the consulate building, is being investigated as part of a broad probe by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) into the mayor’s 2021 campaign. Adams admitted last week that he reached out to Nigro, but insisted he was simply advocating for his constituents in Brooklyn’s sizable Turkish community and had no power to pressure the former fire commissioner into fast-tracking the project, which opened just days after his intervention.
When reporters asked the mayor about the list during a Tuesday morning press conference, he claimed it does not exist under his administration and that he had not heard of it prior to last week’s reports.
“I have not heard of a DMO list,” Adams told reporters.
“This administration never had a DMO list,” he added. “We know nothing about a DMO list … Every New Yorker that comes to me is serviced.”
The mayor charged that press reports falsely assumed the DMO list continued under his administration after first being introduced in de Blasio’s, when it had not.
“People are connecting things that happened in the past to this administration and give the impression that the sins of the past is playing out on this administration,” he said.
The DMO list came to light through a lawsuit filed against the FDNY earlier this year by fire chief Joseph Jardin over his demotion at the hands of FDNY Commissioner Laura Kavanaugh, according to press reports. Jardin said he was demoted from his post as chief of fire prevention for raising concerns about the misuse of the list to benefit big developers, when it was established to help small businesses.
Adams’ Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi, who was also present at the Tuesday news conference, said she had never heard of the DMO list before she began seeing it mentioned in recent news articles. Joshi insisted the administration has focussed on cutting red tape for all development projects, rather than a select few.
“I had never seen the phrase DMO list, until I saw it in the press recently,” Joshi said. “This is an administration about equity. And that’s how we think about solving problems, systemic problems. And so we have a system-wide approach that applies to everybody who interfaces with the system.”
But Kavanagh, in an interview with NBC News 4 last week, acknowledged the list does exist under the Adams administration, while maintaining it is not used to fast-track projects specifically for major developers.
The federal inquiry into Adams’ 2021 campaign is looking at whether it conspired with the Turkish government to funnel illegal donations into its war chest through straw donors associated with a Brooklyn construction company and Washington D.C. based Turkish university.
The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing and his chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, said last week that she has seen “no indication” that he is being targeted by the feds.
However, Adams did have his phones and iPad seized by the FBI on a Manhattan street earlier this month, which followed federal agents raiding the Brooklyn home of his top fundraiser — Brianna Suggs — and several other locations on Nov. 2.
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