The lead prosecutor overseeing Mayor Adams’ landmark federal corruption case has a reputation as a rabble-rouser and a “cowboy” with a penchant for risk-taking that could echo the turbulent case of ex-Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, sources close to Hizzoner said.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York and US Army vet who served in Iraq, has prosecuted a slew of high profile federal fraud cases in recent years, winning convictions against a former associate of Rudy Giuliani as well as Adams’ mentee “Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead.
But those in Hizzoner’s inner circle believe the prosecutor’s comfort with risk-taking and pursuit of his next marquee scalp could undermine the explosive corruption charges against the mayor — and echo the feds’ legal proceedings against Benjamin, which Scotten also handled.
“He’s known as a cowboy who takes risks,” a source close to Adams told The Post.
“[It’s] unusual for that office, and a real sign that the case will have holes, just like with Benjamin.”
Benjamin resigned in 2022 after the feds accused him of taking campaign donations from a real estate developer in exchange for directing state funds to his nonprofit. He was charged with bribery, fraud and falsifying records.
A Manhattan federal judge ended up dismissing the bribery charges, finding there wasn’t evidence of “quid pro quo.”
An appeals court reversed the decision in March, prompting Benjamin’s team to petition the US Supreme Court to hear the case.
“Regardless of the outcome of the appeal, Brian Benjamin’s political career has ended,” the mayor’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Manhattan prosecutors as part of a last-minute effort to quash this weeks criminal charges against Hizzoner.
“A similar fate would face Mayor Adams if he were charged here based on evidence that is far less compelling.”
Scotten, meanwhile, briefly faced some heat for comments he made during the federal criminal trial against Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani who was convicted and sentenced to 20 months in prison for conspiring with others to steer $100,000 from Russian businessmen to political campaigns in 2018.
Defense lawyer Joseph Bondy alleged Scotten threatened to shoot him, although the prosecutor said the comment was made in jest, to which a judge agreed.
Scotten also successfully prosecuted Whitehead, who was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in prison on charges of fraud and attempting to use his connections to the mayor to extort a Bronx auto mechanic.
He also secured a 50-month prison sentence for Charles McGonigal, the disgraced former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to circumvent US sanctions while colluding with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
SDNY and Scotten did not respond to requests for comment.