Mayor Eric Adams' lawyer files brief arguing media leaks have violated right to fair trial

Mayor Eric Adams' defense lawyer filed a brief on Tuesday morning charging Manhattan federal prosecutors with violating the mayor's right to a fair trial by leaking grand jury testimony about his federal corruption charges to the press.

The attorney, Alex Spiro, has asked Manhattan federal judge Dale Ho to schedule a hearing on the issue and to bring sanctions against the prosecutors if the allegations are proven.

“Given the government’s refusal to police its own misconduct, the court must intervene to protect the mayor’s pretrial and trial rights, preserve the integrity of the judicial process,” Spiro wrote in his motion, adding that the judge must ensure future compliance with grand jury secrecy rules “in a case where the government admits it is still looking for evidence to support its theories.”

Last week, Adams became the first sitting New York City mayor in modern history to be indicted. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams on September 26 announced that the mayor had been charged with soliciting and accepting campaign contributions from Turkish nationals -- a violation of federal election law -- and subverting campaign finance law by hiding the origin of those donations through straw donors and bribery.

The lawyer, in the 29-page brief, said that the news of the indictment hit the press before the mayor’s legal team found out about it.

“Only three groups of people could have known the indictment had been returned at the time it was leaked to The Times: the prosecution team, the grand jurors, and court staff who processed the then-sealed indictment,” Spiro said in his brief. “But of those, only the prosecution team would have been privy to the government’s plan to announce additional details the next day (as it did in a self-laudatory press conference). It is therefore clear that the prosecution team is responsible for the leak.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to comment. 

News of the investigation into Adams broke nearly a year ago, in November 2023, when The New York Times and other outlets reported that the FBI had raided the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, home of the mayor’s chief fundraiser Brianna Suggs. Suggs has not been criminally charged.

Spiro notes that the newspaper reported that it had a copy of the search warrant, which has yet to be made public, and mentioned that three iPhones, two laptops and papers had been seized.

Days later, CNN reported that the investigation focused on campaign donations to Adams by foreign nations.

In the indictment, prosecutors charge that Adams received expensive upgrades on Turkish Airlines, among other luxury services, and in exchange leaned on the city fire department to open a newly constructed 36-story Manhattan Turkish consulate despite fire safety issues — allegations that hit the press almost a year before they became public.

As a result of the leaks, Spiro argued in his filing, public sentiment has turned against the mayor.

“A cascade of critical articles based on one-sided, misleading leaks by the government has eroded public support for the Mayor long before he was ever charged with a crime and able to defend himself in court,” the lawyer wrote.

Attorneys for the mayor brought the issue up to federal prosecutors earlier in the year and asked for them to stop the leaks, but Spiro said that U.S. Attorney’s office did not admit to being the source of the information.

“Nor does the government appear to have taken any action whatsoever to try to turn off the spigot of confidential investigative information that began flowing to the media nearly a year before the Mayor was charged,” the lawyer said.

The result of the leaks, Spiro said, has been a drumbeat of public officials calling for Adams’ resignation, making it difficult to perform his elected duties. Additionally, it may have turned the pool of potential jurors against the mayor.

“And by leaking information to the press, the government has infringed the mayor’s right to taint-free grand jury process and impeded his ability to obtain a fair trial from an impartial jury,” the lawyer said.