Mayor Eric Adams’ celebrity attorney Alex Spiro accused federal prosecutors Monday of bringing forth an indictment full of falsehoods — and breaking the law by leaking the case out to the press the night before the historic indictment was unsealed.
Alex Spiro, in a Sept. 30 news conference at his Manhattan offices, argued that the 57-page indictment charging Adams with conspiracy, bribery, soliciting foreign campaign donations, and wire fraud is “not a real case.” The news conference came on the heels of Adams’ legal team filing a motion requesting the federal court toss out the bribery charge against the mayor.
Spiro—a high-priced attorney who has represented celebrities including Jay-Z and Elon Musk—then alleged that the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Damian Williams’ office, and not the mayor’s, violated the law by leaking details of the mayor’s indictment to the media last Wednesday night.
“The prosecutors, having just typed up that indictment … they’re just so excited that they had to leak it to the media,” Spiro said. “When they did that, they violated their ethical obligations. Violating grand jury secrecy is a criminal act.”
Nicholas Biase, an SDNY spokesperson, declined to comment on Spiro’s allegations.
In the indictment, federal prosecutors allege that Adams oversaw a nearly decade-long scheme in which he solicited and accepted unreported luxury gifts and illegal foreign campaign contributions from Turkish nationals in exchange for favors. The central favor under scrutiny is a 2021 action by Adams, when he was still Brooklyn borough president, to push the then-FDNY Commissioner Dan Nigro to expedite the opening of a Manhattan Turkish consulate high-rise that had failed fire safety inspections on behalf of a Turkish diplomat.
Adams pleaded not guilty in federal court last week and is due back in court on Wednesday.
Sprio, in painting a picture of what he alleged was the prosecutors’ ethical and legal breaches in bringing the case and leaking details to the press, mimicked the way that Williams described Adams’ alleged conduct during the SDNY news conference where he unsealed the indictment last week.
“Public office is a privilege. We allege that prosecutors abused that privilege,” he said. “These are laws designed to ensure that officials like them serve the people, not the press, not their careers, not their political careers. These are bright line rules, and we allege that the prosecutors violated them again and again for months.”
The attorney claimed to have evidence of the leaks, besides the press reports that came out since the case came into public view last November, but declined to reveal it during the press conference.
Spiro then laid out the two reasons he believes the mayor is not guilty of bribery and that the charge should and will be dismissed.
The first is that Adams was Brooklyn borough president and not mayor when the alleged quid pro quo, surrounding the Turkish consulate building, took place. He added that if SDNY prosecutors are to be believed, the Turkish Airlines manager who started giving Adams free flight upgrades nearly 10 years ago, would have to have predicted at that time that Adams would someday be mayor.
“The position of Brooklyn borough president does not have vast powers, in fact it has very little,” Spiro said. “You’d have to believe that the gentleman at the airlines 10 years ago, he was the one who predicted that Eric Adams, the kid from Brownsville, who grew up in poverty, who served the city as a police officer, would one day be mayor. That he, as he is upgrading and giving these courtesies to Mr. Adams, that this was his plan, this was the agreement. It defies all logic.”
The second reason, Spiro argued, is that the gifts Adams accepted, which he labled “gratuities,” not bribes, did not constitute a federal crime. He insisted members of Congress get perks all the time without facing any consequences and that Adams was not doing anything different.
“Congressmen get upgrades,” Spiro said. “They get corner suites. They get better tables at restaurants. They get free appetizers. They have their iced tea filled up. That’s just what happens. That’s the truth.”
On top of all that, Spiro said, there is no clear evidence linking the perks Adams received with his role in pushing the FDNY to expedite fire safety approvals for the Turkish Consulate building.
When it comes to the indictment’s allegations that Adams solicited and accepted thousands of dollars in illegal foreign campaign donations, Spiro argued the mayor had “no idea” that those donations were made. Adams is alleged to have taken those dollars into his campaign coffers through straw donors — individuals who make donations on behalf of another and are then reinbursed in order to skirt contribution limits — and put those donations toward securing $10,000,000 in public matching funds for his campaign.
Spiro said that entire piece of the case is shaky because it is based on the account of one witness, an Adams staffer who is unnamed in the indictment, but believed to be his liason to the Turkish community Rana Abasova. He said that because the staffer lied to federal investigators during her initial interview with them, that means she must be lying about the mayor knowing about the illegal campaign donations.
“The main lie, is that Eric Adams knew about anything having to do with this,” Spiro said. “But there’s lots of lies.”
