The indictment shows Mayor Eric Adams and his staff took secret steps to hide their corruption with Turkey even as the federal government closed in on them.
One employee — who appeared to be former City Hall assistant Rana Abbasova, who was placed on leave from the administration for asking employees to delete messages — “made an excuse to go to the bathroom” during an interview with investigators in November 2023, court documents said.
Inside the bathroom, Abbasova “deleted the encrypted messaging application she used to communicate with Adams,” a Turkish official, an airline manager and a promoter, among others who had provided undisclosed benefits to Mayer, according to the documents.
The indictment indicated that Adams also resorted to subterfuge when the federal government first raided his associates and seized his electronic devices in November 2023.
When Adams provided his personal cellphone to federal authorities after being subpoenaed, investigators discovered it was locked and required a password to open.
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The mayor claimed he had changed his password the day before to prevent his staff from accidentally or intentionally deleting the phone's contents because, “according to Adams, he wanted to preserve the contents of his phone due to the investigation,” the indictment states.
“However, Adams further claimed that he had forgotten the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with the password to unlock the phone,” court documents state.
