New York City Mayor Eric Adams and his attorneys are accusing the government of prematurely leaking grand jury material to The New York Times, CNN and other media outlets regarding his federal indictment on corruption charges, a Tuesday filing shows.
“The prejudice from these leaks has been severe. 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,” Adams’s attorneys wrote.
His legal team alleges that sensitive information, including subpoenas, FBI searches and seizures in relation to Adams’s criminal charges, can be found in published articles dating back to 2023.
They cite the Times’s intricate reporting of sealed warrants; a description of items seized from Brianna Suggs, an employee of Adams’s 2021 campaign; and knowledge of witness testimony against the mayor as grounds for dismissal.
“By design, the government’s leaks have steadily created a facade of guilt, resulting in intense, negative scrutiny of Mayor Adams and his administration,” reads the filing. “And by leaking information to the press, the government has infringed the Mayor’s right to a taint-free grand jury process and impeded his ability to obtain a fair trial from an impartial jury.”
Adams’s counsel reportedly alerted the government of the leaks on June 7 and Aug. 13 to no avail, claiming they received no response to their submitted letters and adding they were “flat-out ignored.”
“The government flat-out ignored both letters. In a phone call with prosecutors on August 20, 2024, Mayor Adams’s counsel re-raised the issue of the grand jury leaks and noted that the government still had not responded to the letters and requests for an investigation. The government again summarily dismissed the concerns,” the lawyers wrote.
They later added, “The reality is that the eventual contours of the grand jury’s indictment, as well as the sources from which the grand jury obtained evidence, were available to the public and the prospective jury pool long before the indictment itself, and long before Mayor Adams had the opportunity to defend himself in court.”
This filing comes just a day after his lawyers asked a federal judge to drop the “extraordinarily vague” bribery charge against him. In the wake of the accusations, multiple leaders have called on Adams to step down, although he’s shown no signs of movement toward resigning.