New York mayor Eric Adams indicted on federal charges

Talk about making history: New York City mayor Eric Adams has been indicted by a federal grand jury, the first sitting NYC mayor to face a federal charge while in post.

Adams, who has served as mayor for three years, has been the subject of a federal investigation into whether his campaign was on the receiving end of illegal foreign donations from the Turkish government. New York is currently hosting the annual United Nations General Assembly; Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president, left the city hours before Adams’s indictment.

The indictment itself remains sealed, with more details expected to be revealed later today.

Adams previously served as Brooklyn borough president and was an officer in New York City police forces for two decades. A notorious eccentric, for a lot of his tenure, he could be spotted out late night at douchey Soho private members’ club Zero Bond.

His imminent downfall has led to an outpouring of schadenfreude on social media directed at the “sensible moderates” who thought Adams was the future of the Democratic Party:

The mayor, unsurprisingly, remains defiant. He released a video Wednesday in anticipation of the charges:

My fellow New Yorkers, it is now my belief that the federal government intends to charge me with crimes. If so, these charges will be entirely false, based on lies. But they would not be surprising. I always knew that if I stood my ground, for all of you, that I would be a target. And a target I became. For months, leaks and rumors have been aimed at me in an attempt to undermine my credibility and paint me as guilty. Just this past week, they searched the home of our new police commissioner, looking for documents from twenty years ago, just one week after he joined my administration. Enough. I will fight these injustices with every ounce of my strength and my spirit. If I’m charged, I know I’m innocent.

In other words: they’re not coming after him… they’re coming after you. He’s just standing in the way.