Eric Adams, New York City’s swaggering, stylish mayor, has never shied away from his ties to people with checkered pasts.
He has defended mentoring a Rolls-Royce-driving bishop with a rap sheet, appointing a friend implicated in a past corruption probe as a top aide in his administration, and dining and partying with felons.
“I’m perfectly imperfect,” Adams once said, “and this is a city made up of perfectly imperfect people.”
Now, America’s biggest metropolis faces a full-blown political meltdown. Nagging questions about the company Adams keeps have exploded into a crisis engulfing his administration. Homes of several high-ranking city officials were raided this month. The New York Police Department commissioner resigned on Thursday. Adams’s own phones were seized last year as part of an investigation into whether his campaign received potentially illegal Turkish campaign contributions.