Mayor Eric Adams and his staff sneakily took steps to conceal his corruption with Turkey, even as the feds closed in, the indictment reveals.
One staffer – who appears to be former City Hall Aide Rana Abbasova, who was placed on leave from the administration for asking staffers to delete messages – “excused herself to a bathroom” during an interview with investigators in November 2023, the court papers states.
Inside the bathroom, Abbasova “deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate with Adams,” a Turkish official, an airline manager and promoter, among others, had provided undisclosed benefits to the Mayor, according to the documents.
Adams also appeared to resort to chicanery when the feds first raided his allies and seized his electronic devices in November 2023, the indictment hints.
When Adams provided his personal cellphone to the feds after being subpoenaed, investigators found it was locked and needed a password to open.
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The mayor claimed he had changed his password the day before to prevent his staff from accidentally or intentionally deleting the phone’s content because, “according to Adams, he wished to preserve the contents of his phone due to the investigation,” the indictment states.
“But, Adams further claimed, he had forgotten the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone,” the court papers state.