The Brooklyn home of Mayor Eric Adams’ chief campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, was searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Thursday morning, according to a report from the New York Times.
The home search was confirmed to amNewYork Metro by law enforcement sources, who said it was headed by the FBI and is being handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
The event led the mayor to suddenly pull out of several planned meetings with White House officials and members of Congress in Washington D.C. Thursday morning and to travel back to the city. He said he came back to be “on the ground” following the raid during a Gracie Mansion event Thursday evening.
According to an eye-witness who spoke to amNewYork Metro, 15 federal agents hit Suggs’ home at 929 Lincoln Pl. in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn Thursday morning and walked out with boxes. The Times reported that agents with the bureau’s Public Corruption Squad questioned Suggs during the search of her home.
The raid is reportedly part of a wide-ranging corruption probe by the FBI and SDNY into whether Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign conspired with a Brooklyn Construction firm — named KSK Construction Group — and the Turkish government to funnel foriegn dollars into the mayor’s campaign through straw donors, according to an update to the report from the Paper of Record. The report cited parts of the search warrant they obtained.
The search was seeking financial records from Suggs in addition to financial documents from the campaign and documented interactions between the campaign and the Turkish government, according to the Times.
Suggs is reportedly the mayor’s head fundraiser, bringing in large sums of campaign cash for his 2025 re-election run. She worked on his 2021 campaign as a “fundraiser and director of logistics” and her working relationship with Adams dates back to 2017, when she interned for him when he was still Brooklyn borough president, according to her LinkedIn profile. She claimed to have raised $18.4 million for the mayor’s 2021 primary and general election bids.
Suggs is also a fundraiser for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, according to her LinkedIn. In that role she says she’s tasked to “organize and manage fundraising activities.”
According to the Times, Suggs is also a registered lobbyist.
City Hall spokesperson Charles Lutvak would not say whether the search on the mayor’s fundraiser’s home is what sent him running back to New York Thursday, referring a reporter to the mayor’s campaign.
“If you’re asking about a campaign matter I’d refer you to the campaign and if there are any updates to his public schedule I’ll send them out,” he said.
Adams’ campaign counsel, Vito Pitta, did not specifically address the search in an initial statement to amNewYork Metro.
“The campaign has always held itself to the highest standards,” Pitta said. “The campaign will of course comply with any inquiries, as appropriate.”
Pitta later sent an “additional” statement clarifying that “Mayor Adams has not been contacted as part of this inquiry. He has always held the campaign to the highest standards.”
The mayor traveled to D.C. to push, along with Mayors Mike Johnston of Denver and Brandon Johnson of Chicago, to push for migrant crisis financial aid and a speedier path to work authorization for new arrivals. The other mayors appeared to proceed with the scheduled programming without Adams.
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