A reader of THE CITY, Lynn B., asked our newsroom, “Eric Adams is represented by top legal talent. Who is paying them? Are NYC taxpayers picking up the bill for his defense?”
Here is our answer:
As Mayor Eric Adams contends with his indictment and court case, it’s unlikely taxpayers would cover his legal bills. That’s because payment to the attorneys representing him should, in theory, come from what’s known as the Eric Adams Legal Defense Trust.
The mayor set up that trust — and installed its trustee, his longtime ally Peter Aschkenasy — last November as news emerged about the federal corruption probe of his 2021 campaign.
A legal defense trust is an organization monitored by the city’s Conflict of Interests Board that allows a public servant to raise money to pay for certain types of legal expenses. Through the trust, Adams can accept contributions up to $5,000 per donor. But the fund can’t solicit or accept donations from people with city contracts or business before the city.
Legal defense trusts are relatively new to New York City government. The City Council ed a law allowing for those trusts to form in 2019, to allow then-Mayor Bill de Blasio to raise money for his huge legal bills that stemmed from multiple investigations of his istration and campaign fundraising.
But de Blasio never set up a fund. According to the conflict board’s biting a police officer during a protest in Brooklyn.
According to the legal defense trust law, public officials can use its funds to pay for expenses that relate to “a governmental, istrative, criminal or civil investigation, audit, or action.”
As of the most recent disclosures from the trust made in July, Adams had raked in $1.7 million and spent just over $1.1 million.
Questions remain, however, about exactly what the fund will pay for going forward. In his court appearance Friday, Adams appeared with attorney Alex Spiro, a high-profile lawyer who has represented big-name clients including Elon Musk, Alec Baldwin and Jay-Z.
The mayor is also represented by Brendan R. McGuire, his former chief counsel who returned to private practice at the law firm WilmerHale last year, and William A. Burck of the firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan.
The mayor first hired Spiro to represent him in a sexual assault lawsuit — with taxpayers footing the bill. Why? The city’s corporation counsel — Judge Sylvia Hinds-Radix, who has since resigned — determined that Adams qualified for free legal representation in that case because the allegations stem from his time as a city police officer, a public job.
Can Spiro represent Adams in both the sexual assault case where taxpayers are covering the bill, and the federal corruption case where private donors doing so?
It’s unclear.
Reached by THE CITY, the Conflict of Interest Board, which monitors the fund, confirmed that Adams’ defense trust is raising money to defray legal expenses incurred by the federal case. They directed questions about the mayor’s civil sexual harassment case to the city law department. A spokesperson for the law department declined to comment. Spiro did not answer THE CITY’s request for comment.
Additional reporting by Katie Honan and Greg B. Smith.
