Tangle - The Eric Adams indictment.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 13 minutes.

Corrections.

In Tuesday’s edition on the SAVE Act and Congress’s government funding bill, we wrote that every House Democrat voted against a version of the bill with the SAVE Act included in it. In reality, three Democrats voted for the bill. We misread the vote totals for each party and missed the error in our editing process. 

In the Numbers section of Thursday’s edition on Kamala Harris's filibuster comments, we mistakenly identified Sen. Strom Thurmond as a Republican when he gave the longest individual filibuster speech in Senate history. While Thurmond changed his party affiliation to Republican in 1964, he was a Democrat at the time he gave the speech. Thanks to the readers who wrote in and reminded us to brush up on our history. 

These are our 116th and 117th corrections in Tangle's 269-week history and our first correction since August 28th. We track corrections and place them at the top of the newsletter in an effort to maximize transparency with readers.

Hurricane Helene.

The images from western North Carolina and across the southeast are devastating. Reporting on the news is a job, but we are all human; I’m sending my prayers and positive energy to those on the ground now facing a massive recovery. If you live in the area and have any stories, images, or thoughts to share in the wake of the storm, feel free to press "reply" and send us a note. We want to make sure you are heard. Stay safe.

Is crime getting worse?

On Friday, we shared the perspectives of three different experts on crime in the U.S., each making the case about whether it is getting better or worse — and explaining why crime data is so confusing.

Quick hits.

1. Hurricane Helene has killed at least 116 people and caused widespread destruction across the Southeast after making landfall on Thursday. President Biden issued emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. (The storm) Some areas in Western North Carolina still lack power and cell phone service, and rescue efforts have been hampered by extensive damage to roads. (The latest)
2. The Israeli military said it killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and another top leader in an airstrike on the group's central command headquarters in Beirut on Friday. Hezbollah also confirmed Nasrallah’s death. (The strike)
3. Thousands of dockworkers on the East and Gulf Coasts are preparing to go on strike on Tuesday when a contract between the operators of port terminals and the International Longshoremen’s Association expires. The two sides remain at odds over the size of workers’ wage increases. (The negotiations)
4. A fire at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Georgia, prompted shelter-in-place orders for over 90,000 Georgia residents after air quality surveys found chlorine in the air from the fire. An estimated 17,000 people in Conyers have evacuated their homes. (The fire)
5. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) vetoed a bill that created safety measures for large artificial intelligence models and would have been the first such measure to regulate AI in the U.S. (The veto)

Today's topic.

Eric Adams. On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that federal prosecutors had indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) as part of a corruption investigation. The next day, prosecutors unveiled a five-count indictment against Adams, 64, charging him with bribery, conspiracy, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Adams, who denies the charges and pled not guilty on Friday, is the first mayor of New York City to be charged with a federal crime while still in office.

Back up: Adams won the New York City mayoral race in 2021 and is currently serving a four-year term. He served in the New York Police Department for over 20 years, retiring at the rank of captain, and was a state senator for seven years. Adams then served as Brooklyn Borough President, a position he held until becoming mayor. 

Recently, Adams’s term has been marked by legal troubles and criminal investigations. In 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged six people with conspiring to funnel illegal donations to Adams’s mayoral campaign and also charged the mayor’s former senior adviser and buildings commissioner with conspiracy and taking bribes. In the past month, federal agents seized the phones of high-ranking city government officials — including the police commissioner (who resigned shortly after the seizure), the schools chancellor, the first deputy mayor, and the deputy mayor for public safety — related to parallel investigations to the one into Adams. 

The most recent indictment claims that Adams accepted benefits and donations from foreign businessmen for nearly a decade, highlighting 23 “overt acts.” Some of those alleged acts included:

• Accepting free or discounted business-class travel tickets for international flights to China, Turkey, Sri Lanka, and other countries
• Accepting over $123,000 worth of luxury travel benefits between 2016 and 2021 without disclosing the gifts
• Submitting false disclosure statements to the New York City Campaign Finance Board to conceal campaign donations from foreign businessmen
• Directing staffers to solicit donations from foreign businessmen

In return for these gifts and accommodations, the indictment alleges that Adams leveraged his position to do favors for donors, including pressuring the Fire Department of New York to approve the opening of a 36-story Turkish consular building without a fire inspection. He also allegedly stopped associating with a community center affiliated with a political movement critical of the Turkish government and agreed not to make any comments about the Armenian genocide as mayor. 

Prosecutors also allege Adams and his staff attempted to conceal their activities by creating fake paper trails and deleting potentially incriminating messages. In one instance, investigators said Adams provided them with his cell phone to comply with a subpoena but claimed he had recently changed his password and could not remember it.  

If convicted on all five charges, Adams could face 45 years in prison; the longest potential sentence he faces is for wire fraud, with a maximum sentence of 20 years. On this charge, prosecutors say Adams defrauded a New York City program that matches donations made by city residents to local candidates with public funds. Adams allegedly accepted funds from “straw donors” — U.S. citizens who use their names to embezzle donations from foreign contributors — then used their contributions to apply for matching funds. Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign received more than $10 million in matching funds, but prosecutors did not specify the amount that came from straw donors. 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) could remove Adams from office but has not yet indicated if she plans to. In a statement on Thursday, the governor said Adams should “take the next few days to review the situation and find an appropriate path forward.”

Today, we’ll share perspectives on the indictment from the left and right. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left views the allegations against Adams as credible, and many say he should resign.
• Some say the indictment paints Adams as easily corruptible.
• Others note the irony of the charges given Adams’s focus on law and order.

The New York Times editorial board argued “Eric Adams should resign.”

“The challenge of governing the city is daunting for even the best mayors, and the specter of widespread corruption in the Adams administration has little precedent. There are nearly one million students in the school system, the nation’s largest, but the schools chancellor, under federal investigation, has submitted his resignation. There are about 34,000 officers in the nation’s largest Police Department, but the police commissioner resigned after federal officials seized his phone. The interim commissioner had his home raided by federal agents in an unrelated case after a week on the job.”

“If he stayed in office, Mr. Adams would have to guide a City Hall that is now adrift, while facing a monthslong prosecution that will consume his attention and time. Concerns about his ethics and integrity would surely give potential replacements grave doubts about being a part of his administration,” the board wrote. “The work of those prosecutors and investigators, who included the F.B.I. and the city’s Department of Investigation, is the only good news to come out of this sordid day in New York City history. The diligent work of these public servants showed that the mayor is not above the law… He would better serve his own case and the needs of the city’s 8.3 million residents by stepping down as mayor.”

In The Nation, Elie Mystal said “it’s going to be hard for Eric Adams to swagger his way out of this mess.”

“Adams denies all of these allegations, calling them ‘lies’ in a statement he released on video last night. But, ‘lies’ is not a legal defense. When Adams has to defend himself in a court of law—instead of in the Law & Order episode playing out in his head—his most likely defense will be to say that he didn’t know where all the money was coming from, and blame his staff for soliciting illegal campaign contributions,” Mystal wrote. “The problem with that defense is going to be the fact that Adams didn’t just take money from Turkish nationals for his campaign, he took a slew of trips and vacations, all over the globe, paid for by his far-off benefactors.”

“It’s disturbing to see just how little the mayor of one of the wealthiest cities on the planet could be bought for. On the face of the indictment, Adams sold himself—and sold out his city—for: airline tickets, swanky hotel rooms, and several million dollars of campaign contributions. For all of Adams’s self-proclaimed ‘swagger,’ he turned out to be a relatively cheap date.”

In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch wrote about how “Eric Adams demolished the myth of the ‘law-and-order mayor.’”

“The rank corruption that allegedly propped up Adams’ outward show of swagger is appalling, but it may also prove only the tip of the iceberg. There are multiple ongoing and overlapping probes into Adams’ closest aides — some of whom were hired despite dubious pasts — including high-ranking police brass under investigation for reportedly telling club owners that cop pressure on their establishments might ease up if they hired the police commissioner’s brother,” Bunch said. “The Adams immorality play — he seems to have no intention of resigning, in the spirit of the Donald Trump Era — has unleashed a flood of second-guessing among columnists who now wonder if they were too quick to print the legend of the up-from-nothing former police captain.”

“I think that’s missing the even deeper questions raised by Adams’ stunning rise and fall. His 2021 promise that his police background and orientation would make him a law-and-order mayor — appealing in a city that was rattled by the pandemic and the temporary spike in crime that accompanied it — pushed Adams past a diverse field of mayoral rivals. But the essence of Adams’ unique brand of corruption is that the strongman’s world has two sets of law books — heavily policed authoritarianism for the masses, but no rules at all for the leader and his inner circle.”

What the right is saying.

• The right thinks Adams should stay in office until the legal process plays out.
• Some say Adams’s alleged actions are more benign than the indictment suggests.
• Others argue Adams had failed as mayor before these charges.

The New York Post editorial board said “Eric Adams should stay and offer his defense to New Yorkers.” 

“At first glance, what the government of Turkey got as ‘favors’ from Mayor Adams was small potatoes. Cutting red tape to open the Turkish consulate on time. A position on the transition team. And what did Adams get in return? Campaign donations. And first-class upgrades on Turkish Airlines,” the board wrote. “The latter is embarrassing but may not be illegal. The straw donor scheme is more serious, but Adams denies he knew anything about it. It is in the best interest of fairness — and the best interest of New York City — that Adams be allowed to present a defense while he continues to serve his term.

“The argument of the resignation crowd is that he is so distracted that he cannot possibly lead and that his administration is in chaos with multiple staff either quitting or fleeing for the exits. But the alternative is a recipe for similar chaos,” the board said. “We reserve judgment on whether Mayor Adams did wrong. The law is the law and a fair legal process will get to the truth. The coming days will reveal the strength of the criminal case against Adams and his ability to dismantle it.”

In The Wall Street Journal, James Burnham and Yaakov Roth argued “prosecutors overreach in the case against Eric Adams.”

“The essence of bribery is a quid pro quo, benefits traded for official actions. Prosecutors must prove the benefits, the promised official actions, and the link between them to establish bribery, as the U.S. Supreme Court held in McDonnell v. U.S. (2016),” Burnham and Roth wrote. “Which brings us to Mr. Adams. The indictment spends many paragraphs discussing benefits received—many of them travel and entertainment—but is light on official actions promised in return. Stripped of its innuendo, the indictment recounts a man who lived the high life while serving as Brooklyn borough president and mayor.”

“The gaudiest supposed official act is the allegation that Mr. Adams—months before he was sworn in as mayor—pushed the New York City Fire Department to clear the under-construction Turkish Consulate for opening… This was, apparently, the big payoff to Turkey—asking the future mayor to help cut through red tape so its official facility in New York City would be ready for a presidential visit,” Burnham and Roth said. “In short, the indictment tells a story of campaign donors and benefactors who received enhanced access and attention from an elected official. That fact pattern could hardly be more routine… Prosecutors are as human as their targets. And when their target is as high-profile as Mr. Adams, the temptation to overreach is tremendous.”

In City Journal, John Ketcham wrote about “the defendant mayor.”

“One of the mayor’s biggest problems is that he hasn’t amassed a compelling record of achievements during his three years in office to counterbalance the indictment. New York’s voters and elected leaders would be less likely to defect if he had demonstrated his indispensability to the city’s well-being,” Ketcham said. “But it’s harder to hold your nose and stick with him when any number of alternative individuals could do at least as well, and with far less baggage. Even before the indictment, poll numbers revealed widespread dissatisfaction with Adams’s performance.”

“The mayor’s final appeal to New Yorkers—that the indictment is politically motivated payback for his vocal criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis—is unpersuasive. The charges date back to his tenure as Brooklyn borough president, years before the migrant crisis began. Besides, his bellyaching about Washington won nothing for New York in the end. At bottom, it revealed his ineptitude. Few New Yorkers can say they’re much better off today than they were three years ago. How many should Adams expect to rally to his defense?”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• As with other politicians recently accused of corruption, like Sen. Menendez, the case against Adams looks pretty damning.
• But as Trump’s classified documents case has shown us, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about how the case will proceed.
• In general, I’m optimistic about this current era of accountability for politicians.

In the recent instances when a politician has been indicted, I’ve used this space to make a point about how damning the indictment appears. For instance, when Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted, I said the filing looked incredibly bad. Prosecutors had an abundance of hard evidence: texts, fingerprints, gold bars, hidden cash, and more. Similarly, I thought the Justice Department had former President Trump dead to rights in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. 

While Menendez was later found guilty on all counts, Trump's case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, which Jack Smith appealed to the 11th Circuit Court, where it has been delayed and now won’t be heard until after the election. Which is just to say: Indictments alone do not equate to guilt; and even when the evidence seems strong, cases don't always go how you think they will.

If I’m comparing Adams’s indictment to Menendez’s and Trump’s, I’d say that his indictment reads more like Menendez's. Just as in that case, prosecutors detailed moments of comical corruption from Adams: an Adams staffer who voluntarily spoke to the FBI then left the meeting to "go to the bathroom," where she tried to delete encrypted messaging apps she used to communicate with Adams. Texts of Adams staffers telling him to delete their messages, and him saying he always does. A staffer who thought a proposal to give illegal cash donations to Adams was so egregious he'd never agree to it, only to pass the idea along to Adams and find — to their surprise — he was totally game.

These are all allegations, of course, and they will need to be proven in court. But if I were a betting man, I'd bet that Adams did what is alleged here — and that the prosecution can prove it. And I'd bet a lot.

More interesting to me than the indictment, though, was the response. While many Democrats who were suspicious of Adams from the start seemed unsurprised by the indictment, it was mostly conservatives who rushed to the Democratic mayor’s defense. Perhaps shaped by the prosecutions against Trump, a few prominent writers (as shown under “What the right is saying”) have either argued Adams is innocent until proven guilty or outright criticized an overzealous Justice Department. 

My take is decidedly different: I think we are living in a very good era for accountability of corrupt politicians. Trump presents a divisive case, and he has not had his day in court; but leaving the former president aside completely, the list of politicians (and their families) who have been held accountable in the past few years is considerable:

Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, for corruption and bribery. Hunter Biden, the current president's son, for tax evasion and gun charges. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) and his wife, for bribery and money laundering. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), for sexual misconduct. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), who is still being investigated for misuse of funds (and lost her primary in August). Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao (D), on corruption charges. Tennessee Rep. Andrew Ogles (R), on campaign finance violations. And Rep. George Santos (R), for — well — wire fraud, conspiracy, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, misuse of public funds, and lying to FEC officials (he has also been unseated, pled guilty, and will be sentenced in February).

And now Adams.

That is five Democrats (plus the Democratic president's son) and three Republicans who have been investigated by the Justice Department — all recently, all under a department being led by an attorney general who was appointed by a Democratic president. This is good. This is what we should be doing. Too many people in suits and ties think they can get away with organized crime, fleecing public funds, or blatant misconduct with no accountability. Everyone should want that era to end. I know I do.

So what do I think of the Adams indictment? I'm glad for it. Guilty or not, the evidence against him is compelling enough that it is deserving of an investigation, a trial, and an earnest prosecution. If he’s innocent, that will come out in court. We should be happy that people like him — people as powerful and well connected as the mayor of New York City — can't engage in conversations about cash for favors without facing potential repercussions. 

That's the country I want to live in.

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Under the radar.

The latest Harvard Youth poll found a surprising trend among America’s youngest voters: the 18-to-24-year-old cohort identified as more conservative than the 25-to-29-year-old group. The shift was particularly pronounced among men, with 26% of men in the 18-24 group identifying as conservative compared to 21% in the 25-29 group. While a plurality of voters in both age groups say they are moderates, the shifting attitudes among the youngest cohort stands out relative to previous youth polls that have consistently shown young voters to be more liberal than older groups. John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, suggested that today’s 18-to-24-year-olds may feel more distrustful of the political establishment because of how they were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic as teenagers. Axios has the story.

Numbers.

• 0.8%. Eric Adams’s margin of victory over Maya Wiley in the 2021 Democratic primary for New York City mayor (after eight rounds of ranked-choice voting tabulations). 
• 28%. The percentage of registered voters in New York City who approved of Eric Adams’s performance as mayor in December 2023, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. 
• 61%. The percentage of New York City residents who approved of Adams’s performance as mayor in March 2022, according to a Marist poll. 
• 22%. The percentage of registered voters in New York City who think Adams did something illegal in the federal investigation into whether foreign money was funneled into the 2021 mayoral campaign. 
• 30%. The percentage of registered voters who think Adams acted unethically but not illegally in the matter.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written about the second Republican debate.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was the ad in the free version for Brad’s Deals.
• Nothing to do with politics: A fried chicken sandwich that comes with the claw attached.
• Thursday’s survey: 1,368 readers responded to our survey on the filibuster with 74% saying the Senate should retain it. “Requiring the 60 vote minimum ensures a form of stability within the Senate. It isolates the more radical agendas of both parties by requiring some form of bipartisan agreement,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Shiller Joseph met Krissy Miller while hiking in Provo, Utah, in September 2023. The two strangers struck up a conversation, and Joseph confided to Miller that he was waiting for a kidney transplant. In response, Miller, who is the mother of four children, offered to donate her kidney to him. After testing showed that Miller’s kidney would be a match for Joseph, the two reunited this past week after a successful transplant. KUTV has the story.

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