Dear listeners,
As you know, there is no such thing as an emergency podcast. However, Ken has a busy work week coming up and some big, breaking news broke just at the end of last week, so we thought this was a good week for a Sunday taping that would allow us to catch up promptly on the news about New York mayor Eric Adams, who has been indicted for receiving airline tickets.
Federal prosecutors allege that Adams accepted tens of thousands of dollars of free business-class upgrade on Turkish Airlines as part of a broader scheme to receive illegal support from foreign nationals (including concealed political donations from Turks) in exchange for official favors, including from the Fire Department of New York. This is a long, fun “speaking indictment” with juicy details, including Adams creating a bogus paper trail to suggest he had bought airline tickets with cash and one Adams associate trying to wipe her phone in the bathroom during an FBI interview. It’s gross and embarrassing. But as Ken and I have discussed, public corruption cases are often very difficult to prove — so do the Feds have Adams dead to rights here? And what about all the other Adams-related investigations that haven’t yet resulted in indictments?
We also have a new addition to our what-not-to-do list, since top Adams aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin went on her own lawyer’s talk radio show to reassure listeners that Team Adams, while “imperfect,” never did “anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the DA’s office to investigate us.” Of course, lawyers who also host audio programs are the best kind of lawyers, but that does not mean that you personally, client, should appear on the programming.
Plus, there’s other news: Three Iranian hackers indicted for the breach of Trump campaign documents; a hot bench in an appellate hearing over the $450 million Trump civil judgment that may or may not amount to anything; and a settlement in Smartmatic v. Newsmax that everyone is pretending to be happy about.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
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