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Mayor Eric Adams of New York City railed against the federal authorities who accused him of corruption and seized his numerous cellphones.
May 13, 2025, 6:11 p.m. ET
Mayor Eric Adams of New York on Tuesday criticized federal authorities who brought a corruption case against him, saying that documents made public last week showed they were “plotting” to embarrass him.
Mr. Adams, who faced federal bribery and fraud charges before President Trump’s Justice Department abandoned the case against him earlier this year, assailed the investigation and in particular the suggestion that federal agents had considered seizing his electronic devices at the finish line of the 2023 New York City Marathon.
“I was targeted for humiliation,” he said at this weekly news conference at City Hall, adding: “They wanted to take my phones at the goddamn marathon.”
Mr. Adams’s comments on Tuesday were his most extensive, and pointed, since some 1,700 pages of documents from his case were released on Friday, revealing new details about the corruption investigation that had focused on the mayor. They showed that federal authorities were forging ahead with the investigation, obtaining a new warrant in February seeking evidence of fraud and federal program bribery by Mr. Adams’s campaigns. Then the Trump administration intervened to end it.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September by federal prosecutors in Manhattan on five counts, including bribery, wire fraud and solicitation of illegal foreign donations.
In February, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, directed the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan to seek the case’s dismissal, arguing that the indictment was interfering with the mayor’s ability to cooperate with Mr. Trump’s deportation agenda.
