NYC Mayor Adams Says FBI Hasn’t Contacted Him Over Campaign Aide
(Bloomberg) -- New York City Mayor Eric Adams hasn’t been contacted by US authorities in an inquiry that led the Federal Bureau of Investigation to search the home of a fundraising consultant, a campaign lawyer said.
Most Read from Bloomberg
Biggest Cross-Asset Rally This Year Takes Wall Street by Storm
Iceland’s Blue Lagoon on Alert for Magma Flows After Earthquakes
Israel’s Fight With Iran Proxies in Syria Poisons Russia Ties
FBI agents executed the search of Brianna Suggs’s home in Brooklyn, New York, on Thursday, a spokesman for the bureau said. Suggs worked on the mayor’s 2021 campaign and has been fundraising for his 2025 re-election campaign. During the search, agents from an FBI public corruption squad questioned her, the New York Times reported.
“Mayor Adams has not been contacted as part of this inquiry,” Vito Pitta, the 2021 campaign counsel, said in an email. “He has always held the campaign to the highest standards.”
The search came as Adams flew to Washington to meet the New York congressional delegation and members of the White House to discuss the migrant crisis in the city. He abruptly canceled his trip and returned to New York.
“The mayor returned to New York City to address a matter. These meetings will be rescheduled as soon as possible,” spokesman Charles Lutvak said, declining to comment further.
Latest Issue
The search of Suggs’s home is the latest legal issue to touch both Adams’s mayoral campaign and his administration. In September, Eric Ulrich, a former City Council member Adams appointed as a senior adviser and later as commissioner of the City’s Buildings Department, was indicted on felony charges of taking bribes and conspiracy.
Three other men indicted alongside Ulrich were hosts for an August 2021 fundraiser for Adams’s mayoral campaign.
And in July, the Manhattan district attorney secured indictments of six people for conspiring in an alleged fraud scheme that involved straw donations to Adams’s 2021 campaign.
Adams wasn’t implicated or accused of wrongdoing in either set of indictments.
Probe Under SDNY
The Suggs probe is being overseen by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesman for the office declined to comment.
Adams has raised more than $2.5 million so far for his 2025 re-election campaign. Since 2022 his campaign has paid Suggs’s firm, Suggs Solutions LLC, almost $100,000 for her fundraising work.
Suggs couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
These Five Countries Are Key Economic ‘Connectors’ in a Fragmenting World
Online Gambling Has Millions of Young Africans Battling Addiction
Shipping Startup Flexport Is in Crisis Mode Heading Into the Holiday Season
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.