Eric Adams Could Be in Deep Trouble. Here’s What Our Insiders Say.

New York City’s political scene has been unraveling at a dizzying pace ever since Eric Adams became the first sitting New York mayor to be charged with a federal crime .

On Friday morning, Adams made the trek to the federal courthouse at 500 Pearl Street in downtown Manhattan for his first court appearance, one day after a federal indictment charging him with bribery and fraud became public. He pleaded not guilty , as expected, but the calls for the mayor’s resignation have been growing. He has remained defiant and given no indication that he will step aside or abandon his already faltering reelection bid .

In the meantime, Gov. Kathy Hochul has begun looking into the possibility of removing Adams herself , but that effort could come with its own fraught legal and political dynamics. Former President Donald Trump has also stepped into the fray — casting Adams as a fellow victim of politically motivated prosecutors.

The result of all this is an array of legal and political questions that could have major implications in New York and beyond.

To take stock of where things stand and what may come in the weeks ahead, we convened a group of our veteran New York legal and political reporters. We were joined by Erica Orden, who covers legal affairs and was in the courthouse for Adams’ court appearance; Sally Goldenberg, senior New York editor; Joe Anuta, who covers City Hall; and David Freedlander, who writes about New York politics as a Politico Magazine contributing writer.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Erica, you’ve been very busy covering these legal spectacles in downtown New York this year. We had the Trump trial earlier this year down at Centre Street. This is at 500 Pearl Street in the federal courthouse. Can you take us downtown and inside the courthouse today?

Orden: If you had asked me this question a couple of years ago, I would probably have been blown away by the spectacle of it. But, for better or worse, Trump has really raised the bar on how insane a courthouse scenario can be. And so even though it was remarkable to see him sitting there in this quiet courtroom and see him plead not guilty, there’s no Secret Service there. There’s no massive security presence.

Joe, you have covered Adams for a long time, but many people outside of New York are probably just now being introduced to him. Can you talk a bit about Adams’ political history and specifically the questions that have dogged him for years about potential improprieties like this?

Anuta: He’s been a public figure for really decades at this point. When he was in the NYPD, which he retired from as a captain, he was a very vocal member of the NYPD in a way that is just unusual. You don’t see it today: Someone at his rank having press conferences and speaking out about things he didn’t like about the department. He was head of a fraternal organization within the department — 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care.

He was a state senator representing a little piece of Brooklyn for many years. He was known as a bombastic speaker. He knew how to grab a headline. He has just always been in the spotlight and been very comfortable in that spotlight.

I think that sort of style has served him well, actually. He’s a very strong campaigner. I think he’s a very good messenger. He won the borough president’s race in 2013 so he basically had spent eight years in this weird, vestigial, ceremonial role that doesn’t really do anything anymore. It’s kind of leftover from how government used to be organized in New York, but a lot of people use it to run for higher office because you get to just cut ribbons, kiss babies, give out proclamations, and they have some money to throw around.

And you interact with a lot of these community groups, which we’re now seeing are playing into this indictment. I mean, we did a story about how often he met with the Turkish community , which I would say is a little odd, just given how tiny the diaspora is in Brooklyn — there’s a much bigger one in New Jersey.

Has he changed at all since his early days? The stories of him going to Zero Bond , hanging out late at night with wealthy people — was he always like that or is that a relatively new phenomenon?

Anuta: I don’t think he’s changed much.

Freedlander: I don’t think he’s changed much either. I think that when you’re a state senator and a Brooklyn borough president, no one really cares about what you do. So I think we probably all heard stories about him back in the day.

He did seem like he got kind of serious about his health. And that included some spirituality and diet and all that stuff.

So, Sally, I’m curious, did something like this — maybe not an indictment, but like a real big scandal — feel inevitable, given how Adams has conducted himself in his administration?

Goldenberg: We knew that he was always of interest to prosecutors in his days in the state Senate. Their interest in him doesn’t surprise me. I don’t know if I’d say an indictment felt inevitable, because I didn’t cover him automatically assuming he was guilty of a crime.

But I’m not shocked that they were looking into him. They’ve always shown an interest in him, and his behavior has always been unorthodox.

Unorthodox is definitely the right word. David, was this eccentricity — for lack of a better word under the circumstances — part of his appeal as mayor?

Freedlander: I don’t think so, to be honest. If you thought of his appeal, this would be a third or fourth order level of appeal.

I think his appeal was that the city’s politics are very much broken down along tribal and ethnic lines. He was able to consolidate the Black and Hispanic vote and also get Asian and Orthodox Jews and outer borough white moderates. He ran on the promise of cleaning up the city, cutting down on crime and being business-friendly. He was also very assiduously cultivating the New York Post , which meant that even though he’s a great person for the New York Post to have their sights on, they went a little easy on him because he was sort of the only one keeping the woke mob at the gates.

The eccentricity made him fun to cover, but I don’t think it made him appealing to anyone.

Anuta: He’s a very authentic New York character. The eccentricity is part of it. I think it’s why he was able to campaign so effectively. He can really connect with people in a way that [former Mayors Bill] de Blasio and [Mike] Bloomberg could not. He could say, I have experienced all the problems that all of you are experiencing now, and here’s my plan to fix them.

Freedlander: I would absolutely agree with that. He’s a very charismatic, natural politician, which is a little different than eccentricity, but I totally agree.

Erica, you’ve covered a bunch of high-profile criminal cases in New York. They all have their quirks. Did anything in the indictment — which are just allegations, to be clear — jump out at you as particularly noteworthy or interesting?

Orden: I thought what was interesting about the indictment was that they chose to do what’s called a speaking indictment. So for example, if you look at the Sean Combs indictment that came a week or two ago, I think that indictment was 12, 13, 14 pages, something like that. The allegations in there are extreme, but there’s not a lot of detail in that indictment. It’s pretty bare bones.

If you look at the Eric Adams indictment, which is 57 pages, there’s quite a lot of detail. There are photos of these luxury hotel rooms he stayed in. There are snippets of conversations. There are text messages. There are details of a staffer excusing herself during an FBI interview to go delete encrypted apps that she was texting him on.

There’s just a level of detail in there that you don’t always see. It’s not wildly uncommon for the Southern District of New York to do this, but it was a choice to put it all in there. They’re not required to do that, and they certainly didn’t have to. So that is what caught my attention about the indictment.

I would assume the rationale for the distinction for prosecutors is that Combs does not hold a public office and is not running for public office. In this situation, Adams is a currently sitting mayor, planning to run for reelection.

So prosecutors tend to think that there’s more of an urgency to get the details — which are still just allegations — out to the public. This is one of the reasons why, when people say that the Justice Department doesn’t talk about its cases or ongoing cases, that is not really true. They do talk when they want to. And this is one of those circumstances, as Erica pointed out, where they have decided to be more forthright than they are in most cases.

Orden: I think that’s true. It’s a way for them to make the information public whether or not this goes to trial, whether or not they ever get to present any evidence in front of a jury. It’s out there now. There’s no taking it back.

Joe, what has the response to the charges been in New York’s political world so far? Are there any divisions between city, state and federal elected officials?

Anuta: I would say the divisions are more just on the political spectrum. Early and quite forcefully, you had a lot of people on the left wing of the Democratic Party call for Adams to resign. These are people who have never liked Eric. If anything, it boosted their political capital to call on him to step down. So you had a lot of local elected officials in the Progressive Caucus in the city council, for example, calling on him to resign. You had Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling on him to resign.

The mayor doesn’t care, honestly, that these people are calling on him to resign. In fact, in some ways, he may relish it a little bit because he can say to his supporters: Look, these people who have always hated me are now trying to use unproven allegations to get me out of office.

I think what we are all watching very closely is how and when does that start to bleed into more of his base, his political allies, or even just people who overlap with his politics. I feel like we’re not really seeing that yet. The governor released a statement that didn’t really say much. It said the allegations are serious, and she’s looking into it. She has the power to remove him, but she certainly didn’t say she was going to do that. You had Jerry Nadler call for the mayor to resign, but Jerry has one of his mentees running against Adams in the next upcoming mayoral election. So I think the political divisions are important and we haven’t seen a lot of crossover into Adams’ base.

Sally, legally this will run its course, but the big issue in the near term is political. What is the likelihood that Adams steps down, and if he does, what happens next?

Goldenberg: I don’t think he’s gonna step down. He said he’s not going to. I expect him to fight this, and unless he cuts a deal in which that’s required, I don’t anticipate that happening. If he doesn’t step down, there’ll be a Democratic primary next June, as planned. And if he does step down, there would be a nonpartisan special election within 90 days.

What’s his current standing in the primary?

Goldenberg: His polling numbers are terrible. They were before this. And I haven’t seen a public poll since this has happened, but I assume that an indictment doesn’t help the polling numbers. He was at 28 percent in December, which is historically bad for an incumbent mayor due to other problems — budget cuts in the city, crime, subway crime and homelessness. So his political position was already in peril before he was indicted.

So there is a scenario in which he attempts to stick it out and loses his primary, then leaves office next year, and then he just deals with the criminal case.

Goldenberg: Yeah, I don’t think there’s any motivation for him to step down unless, as I said, it’s part of some deal he cuts with prosecutors.

There’s a possibility that he could win, if people feel that he’s being treated unfairly, which is what he’s going to say. There’s a scenario in which, if he can effectively convince the public of that, or at least his base of that, it could actually help boost him.

You know, Donald Trump won the nomination with how many cases and how many indictments and criminal counts against him? So there is a world in which this could help. Adams is going to say, and has said, that he’s being targeted by an overzealous prosecutor. He’s implying that it’s because he criticized the Biden administration for not giving the city enough resources for the migrant crisis. And so if he can effectively communicate that message to his base, there’s a world in which it does help him.

But New York City has a pretty active primary base that’s very good-government conscious, and those people — The New York Times readers — will not be impressed by that argument, I would assume. So it kind of remains to be seen. But no, I don’t think he’ll step down.

What about Gov. Hochul? Is there any chance at this point that she would take steps to remove him?

Goldenberg: She’s so cautious, and she likes him, too. I don’t know if she personally likes him, but they’re political allies.

Also if she pulls him out of office and there’s a special election and Andrew Cuomo wins it — which he could — she might believe he’s coming for her. I think he would: He wants his job back. He hates her. And so she’s kind of helping elevate him in a weird way if she gets rid of Eric Adams.

I want to open this up to everyone. Adams has been arraigned. The last 48 hours of public and political frenzy I think will die down a little bit. But what do folks see on the horizon in the weeks and months ahead?

Orden: It might die down, but it might not, because there are multiple other investigations floating out there, several of which seem to be heating up, not dying down. One of the questions I had about this was why they charged it now, instead of waiting to charge multiple alleged schemes at the same time.

Anuta: I just think there’s going to be a big showdown. Adams is very dug in, and there’s just going to be a massive butting of heads between him and U.S. Attorney Damian Williams in the Southern District.

The mayor doesn’t seem shy about that. He doesn’t seem shy about criticizing the White House and claiming that he became a target because of his past disagreements with the White House. So I think federal politics is, from his perspective, definitely going to play a role in this over the next couple of weeks, or however long this lasts.

Freedlander: I’m wondering, how does this prosecution proceed with him running for reelection? I mean, if he wins reelection, what an embarrassment that would be for the SDNY. So they’re under pressure to get him out of there, either through a trial or taking a plea agreement or something before things heat up.

Goldenberg: We’re all staying tuned for what’s to come. The federal prosecutors and FBI raided the homes and took the cell phones of at least five of his top aides that we know of.

Anuta: Six. Ingrid [Lewis-Martin] just got her phone taken by the Manhattan DA as we were on this call.

The Manhattan DA?

Orden: Well, now you’ve got another investigation.

Goldenberg: This is why I was about to say, stay tuned. Because I don’t think what we saw on Thursday is their strongest offering.

I don’t know why they started with it, because knowing what we know — some of which we will soon report about — I just think there’s more. I think there’s really strong stuff that they will find against some of these topics.