Mayor Eric Adams coyly suggested he would “welcome” the support of Donald Trump as he fights bombshell federal bribery charges — while he quietly added a former Trump White House lawyer to his defense team.
Hizzoner responded in broad terms Tuesday to a question about the former president contending the mayor’s stance on the Big Apple’s migrant crisis made him a target.
“I welcome support from every American,” Adams said. “No matter where they are and who they are. I welcome support from everyone from those who know me and from those who are just reading up on this. Every American in this great country, I welcome support from.”
The comments came as dozens of reporters repeatedly pressed Adams during his first weekly press conference since his historic federal criminal charges.
Trump last week claimed he predicted Adams would face federal charges when the mayor spoke out on migrants, and implicitly against President Joe Biden — an argument that echoes his own claims that he’s a victim of legal persecution by the FBI and Department of Justice.
“And I said, ‘You know what? He’ll be indicted within a year,’” Trump recounted during a Trump Tower press conference.
A sprawling federal indictment unveiled against Adams last week accuses him of defrauding taxpayers out of $10 million in matching campaign funds and taking $123,000 in bribes in the form of luxury travel perks from Turkish officials and nationals.
The mayor pleaded not guilty to all five counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud. He’s next due in court on Wednesday.
Adams himself has insinuated, without offering evidence, that his stance on the migrant crisis put him in the political crosshairs of the federal government.
The perhaps not-so-odd-couple ties between the Democrat Adams and Republican Trump grew tighter behind-the-scenes as the mayor mounts his legal defense.
Conservative attorney John Bash — whom Trump hand-picked in 2017 to serve as US Attorney for the Western District of Texas — is now helping Adams combat his federal charges in Manhattan, court records show.
Bash was one of Trump’s legal advisers in the White House during the first year of his presidency and earlier in his career clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices Brett Kavanaugh and Antonin Scalia.
Now, he works at the law firm Quinn Emanuel, alongside Adams’ trial attorney Alex Spiro.
As US Attorney for the Western District of Texas, from December 2017 until October 2020, Bash was asked to enforce Trump’s controversial policy of separating families from their children at the border — but Bash pushed back against how the policy was being implemented, The Atlantic reported.
Bash also worked in the Solicitor General’s office in President Obama’s Justice Department from 2012-17 and argued 10 cases before the US Supreme Court.
Adams has also added another attorney to his team — William “Bill” Burck — who once represented Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, records show.
Burck had been representing Bannon in a fraud case in Manhattan federal court, but abruptly dropped him as a client in November 2020 shortly after Bannon — reeling from Trump losing the presidential election to Biden — publicly called for FBI director Chris Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci to be beheaded, records show.
Burck also worked as a top lawyer in George W. Bush’s White House and serves on the board of directors at the Fox Corporation.