NYC Mayor Eric Adams lied to FBI about access to his cellphone, prosecution papers say
New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Credit: Newsday/James Carbone
The obstruction of justice charge that prosecutors contemplated bringing against Mayor Eric Adams before the Justice Department dropped the public corruption case against him was based on a lie that the FBI believed he told agents about locking his cellphone and forgetting the password, according to federal investigative records unsealed Friday evening.
The New York City mayor was indicted in September 2024 on conspiracy to defraud the federal government, bribery, wire fraud and accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
The indictment centered on a relationship the mayor had formed with Turkish business people and the country's government nearly a decade ago while he was still the Brooklyn borough president. Prosecutors charged that Adams received more than $100,000 in free or steeply discounted airfare on Turkish Airlines and other travel accommodations in exchange for performing municipal favors.
Manhattan District Judge Dale Ho on Friday ordered the release of court records — 1,785 pages in all — related to search warrants in the case against the mayor at the request of The New York Times and New York Post, which argued that there was no longer a need to keep the documents secret since the case was dismissed permanently.
The papers indicate that perhaps the most dramatic confrontation between the mayor and investigators came on Nov. 6, 2023, as Adams left a celebration at New York University in Greenwich Village.
According to a federal agent’s affidavit unsealed Friday, Federal Magistrate Judge Gary Stein signed a warrant allowing the FBI, which was looking for Adams’ personal cellphone, to seize all of the mayor’s electronic devices. The agents took three cellphones and a laptop from the mayor.
When they asked him if he had any other devices on him, he said no, according to the court papers, an affidavit seeking a judge's approval on a search warrant for further data from the mayor's personal cellphone. The judge ultimately signed it.
The next day, Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, dropped the mayor's personal cellphone off at the FBI’s office in Manhattan.
The lawyer told agents that the mayor had changed the password on the phone days before the seizure, but then couldn’t remember the code. According to the federal agent’s account, Spiro said that Adams believed that because some staffers knew his original password and the federal investigation was heating up, he thought it best to make the device more secure.
Adams said he thought he changed the password to 936639, but realized that was incorrect and couldn't remember the right sequence, the agent said in court papers. The lawyer told the FBI that the mayor intended to take the phone to the Apple store to get it unlocked, but hadn’t gotten around to it and left it at City Hall the day agents tried to get it because it was not serviceable, records show.
FBI agents believed that Adams lied to them when he said he didn’t have his cellphone on him outside Washington Square Park on Nov. 6, 2023.
"Location data for the Adams personal cellphone indicates that Adams’s representations were false," the agent wrote in his affidavit.
Cellphone data obtained by investigators shows that the phone was sending signals to cell towers around City Hall between 5:30 and 5:48 that day. The phone continued to travel northbound on Sixth Avenue until it got to 29th Street, when it went silent.
Agents believed that the cellphone tower data was "evidence of Adams’s obstructive conduct and false statements would be strong evidence of Adams’s consciousness of guilt, particularly given that the suspected obstruction and false statements related to an electronic device for which there was probable cause to believe evidence of the Subject Offenses in the Government’s investigation, which had recently become publicly known, would be found," the agent wrote.
In October 2024 during a hearing after the indictment was unsealed, Manhattan federal prosecutor Hagen Scotten said investigators still were not able to open Adams' phone, calling it a "significant wild card" in the case.
Interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon indicated in court records that her office was preparing further charges against the mayor for destroying evidence, lying to the FBI and instructing others to destroy evidence.
Those charges never came.
Emil Bove, a high-ranking Justice Department official, ordered the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to drop the case on Feb. 10, claiming it was politically motivated and interfered with the mayor’s ability to carry out the president's immigration crackdown. Both Sassoon and Scotten resigned in protest.
Ho ordered the case dismissed on April 2.
Spiro, Adam's lawyer, said Saturday in an emailed statement, “This case — the first-of-its-kind airline upgrade ‘corruption’ case — should never have been brought in the first place and is now over."
The obstruction of justice charge that prosecutors contemplated bringing against Mayor Eric Adams before the Justice Department dropped the public corruption case against him was based on a lie that the FBI believed he told agents about locking his cellphone and forgetting the password, according to federal investigative records unsealed Friday evening.
The New York City mayor was indicted in September 2024 on conspiracy to defraud the federal government, bribery, wire fraud and accepting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
The indictment centered on a relationship the mayor had formed with Turkish business people and the country's government nearly a decade ago while he was still the Brooklyn borough president. Prosecutors charged that Adams received more than $100,000 in free or steeply discounted airfare on Turkish Airlines and other travel accommodations in exchange for performing municipal favors.
Manhattan District Judge Dale Ho on Friday ordered the release of court records — 1,785 pages in all — related to search warrants in the case against the mayor at the request of The New York Times and New York Post, which argued that there was no longer a need to keep the documents secret since the case was dismissed permanently.
The papers indicate that perhaps the most dramatic confrontation between the mayor and investigators came on Nov. 6, 2023, as Adams left a celebration at New York University in Greenwich Village.
According to a federal agent’s affidavit unsealed Friday, Federal Magistrate Judge Gary Stein signed a warrant allowing the FBI, which was looking for Adams’ personal cellphone, to seize all of the mayor’s electronic devices. The agents took three cellphones and a laptop from the mayor.
When they asked him if he had any other devices on him, he said no, according to the court papers, an affidavit seeking a judge's approval on a search warrant for further data from the mayor's personal cellphone. The judge ultimately signed it.
The next day, Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, dropped the mayor's personal cellphone off at the FBI’s office in Manhattan.
The lawyer told agents that the mayor had changed the password on the phone days before the seizure, but then couldn’t remember the code. According to the federal agent’s account, Spiro said that Adams believed that because some staffers knew his original password and the federal investigation was heating up, he thought it best to make the device more secure.
Adams said he thought he changed the password to 936639, but realized that was incorrect and couldn't remember the right sequence, the agent said in court papers. The lawyer told the FBI that the mayor intended to take the phone to the Apple store to get it unlocked, but hadn’t gotten around to it and left it at City Hall the day agents tried to get it because it was not serviceable, records show.
FBI agents believed that Adams lied to them when he said he didn’t have his cellphone on him outside Washington Square Park on Nov. 6, 2023.
"Location data for the Adams personal cellphone indicates that Adams’s representations were false," the agent wrote in his affidavit.
Cellphone data obtained by investigators shows that the phone was sending signals to cell towers around City Hall between 5:30 and 5:48 that day. The phone continued to travel northbound on Sixth Avenue until it got to 29th Street, when it went silent.
Agents believed that the cellphone tower data was "evidence of Adams’s obstructive conduct and false statements would be strong evidence of Adams’s consciousness of guilt, particularly given that the suspected obstruction and false statements related to an electronic device for which there was probable cause to believe evidence of the Subject Offenses in the Government’s investigation, which had recently become publicly known, would be found," the agent wrote.
In October 2024 during a hearing after the indictment was unsealed, Manhattan federal prosecutor Hagen Scotten said investigators still were not able to open Adams' phone, calling it a "significant wild card" in the case.
Interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon indicated in court records that her office was preparing further charges against the mayor for destroying evidence, lying to the FBI and instructing others to destroy evidence.
Those charges never came.
Emil Bove, a high-ranking Justice Department official, ordered the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to drop the case on Feb. 10, claiming it was politically motivated and interfered with the mayor’s ability to carry out the president's immigration crackdown. Both Sassoon and Scotten resigned in protest.
Ho ordered the case dismissed on April 2.
Spiro, Adam's lawyer, said Saturday in an emailed statement, “This case — the first-of-its-kind airline upgrade ‘corruption’ case — should never have been brought in the first place and is now over."
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