The lead prosecutor overseeing Mayor Adams’ landmark federal corruption case has a fame as a rabble-rouser and a “cowboy” with a penchant for risk-taking that would echo the turbulent case of ex-Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, sources near Hizzoner mentioned.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant US lawyer for the Southern District of New York and US Military vet who served in Iraq, has prosecuted a slew of excessive profile federal fraud circumstances lately, profitable convictions towards a former affiliate of Rudy Giuliani in addition to Adams’ mentee “Bling Bishop” Lamor Whitehead.
However these in Hizzoner’s interior circle consider the prosecutor’s consolation with risk-taking and pursuit of his subsequent marquee scalp may undermine the explosive corruption costs towards the mayor — and echo the feds’ authorized proceedings towards Benjamin, which Scotten additionally dealt with.
“He’s often called a cowboy who takes dangers,” a supply near Adams advised The Put up.
“[It’s] uncommon for that workplace, and an actual signal that the case may have holes, similar to with Benjamin.”
Benjamin resigned in 2022 after the feds accused him of taking marketing campaign donations from an actual property developer in alternate for guiding state funds to his nonprofit. He was charged with bribery, fraud and falsifying information.
A Manhattan federal decide ended up dismissing the bribery costs, discovering there wasn’t proof of “quid professional quo.”
An appeals court docket reversed the choice in March, prompting Benjamin’s staff to petition the US Supreme Court docket to listen to the case.
“Whatever the end result of the enchantment, Brian Benjamin’s political profession has ended,” the mayor’s attorneys wrote in a letter to Manhattan prosecutors as a part of a last-minute effort to quash this weeks felony costs towards Hizzoner.
“The same destiny would face Mayor Adams if he have been charged right here primarily based on proof that’s far much less compelling.”
Scotten, in the meantime, briefly confronted some warmth for feedback he made through the federal felony trial towards Lev Parnas, an affiliate of Giuliani who was convicted and sentenced to twenty months in jail for conspiring with others to steer $100,000 from Russian businessmen to political campaigns in 2018.
Protection lawyer Joseph Bondy alleged Scotten threatened to shoot him, though the prosecutor mentioned the remark was made in jest, to which a decide agreed.
Scotten additionally efficiently prosecuted Whitehead, who was discovered responsible and sentenced to 9 years in jail on costs of fraud and trying to make use of his connections to the mayor to extort a Bronx auto mechanic.
He additionally secured a 50-month jail sentence for Charles McGonigal, the disgraced former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, who pleaded responsible to conspiring to bypass US sanctions whereas colluding with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
SDNY and Scotten didn’t reply to requests for remark.
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