Federal brokers raided the houses of two high-ranking officers inside New York Metropolis mayor Eric Adams’ administration, in response to reviews.
On Thursday, native information outlet the Metropolis cited sources accustomed to the scenario who mentioned that federal brokers carried out the raid on early Wednesday within the houses of Sheena Wright, the primary deputy mayor, and Philip Banks III, the deputy mayor for public security.
Federal brokers concurrently confirmed up at Wright’s Hamilton Heights townhouse in Manhattan at 5am, and at Banks’s residence in Hollis, Queens, one supply informed the outlet. The supply added that federal brokers confiscated each Wright’s and Banks’s telephones and laptops.
David Banks, the fiance of Wright and brother of Phil Banks, declined to touch upon the raid to the Metropolis and didn’t instantly reply to the Guardian’s request for remark.
As a substitute, Banks, who was appointed colleges chancellor by Adams, informed the Metropolis: “At present is the primary day of faculty and I’m thrilled.”
In 2014, Philip Banks abruptly resigned because the New York police division’s chief of division amid a federal bribery investigation during which federal brokers uncovered proof that he had accepted 1000’s of {dollars} in free meals and sports activities tickets, per the Metropolis’s report.
The aim of the alleged raid on Wednesday stays unclear. The Guardian has contacted the FBI and Adams’s workplace for remark.
In November 2023, federal brokers raided the Crown Heights residence in Brooklyn of Eric Adams’s prime marketing campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. Earlier in 2023, the Metropolis reported that Adams and his marketing campaign crew ignored metropolis regulators’ requests on a number of events to reveal the identities of greater than 500 supporters behind $300,000 in marketing campaign contributions.
A couple of days after Suggs’s residence was raided, federal brokers seized at the least two telephones and an iPad belonging to Adams. Talking to the New York Occasions on the time, sources accustomed to the matter mentioned that the FBI investigation revolved round whether or not Adams’s 2021 mayoral marketing campaign “conspired with the Turkish authorities and others to funnel cash into its coffers”.
Since taking workplace, Adams has appointed lots of his shut mates to prime positions in metropolis.
Along with appointing David Banks and his fiance, Wright, as public colleges chancellor and deputy mayor, respectively, Adams – a former NYPD captain himself – employed his longtime pal Lisa White because the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for worker relations with an annual wage of greater than $241,000.
Adams’s administration has confronted backlash on quite a lot of points, together with his blocking of a ban on solidarity confinement final July after at the least 26 folks died in New York Metropolis jails since January 2022.
“Every day Mayor Adams’ administration exhibits how little respect it has for the legal guidelines and democracy,” Shirley Limongi, metropolis council spokesperson, mentioned in an announcement on the time, including: “It units extra hypocritical double requirements for complying with the legislation that depart New Yorkers worse off.”
Moreover, reviews in June revealed that NYPD complaints underneath Adams have reached the very best stage since 2012, with rising stop-and-frisk encounters in addition to officers carrying morale patches on their vests that comprise potential white supremacist imagery.
Adams, who has issued anti-immigration sentiments a number of instances, has additionally confronted controversy over his feedback on asylum seekers, whom he described as “wonderful swimmers” who may assist repair the town’s lifeguard scarcity on its seashores.
In March, Adams was accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a girl in 1993 and demanding a sexual favor in alternate for his assist advancing her profession within the metropolis’s transit police division. Adams has denied the accusations.
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