Mayor Adams on Thursday dismissed considerations concerning the $3 million debt he owes his protection lawyer and others concerned in his felony case, saying that how he pays off his authorized charges is “between Eric Adams and his attorney.”
The mayor owes many of the hundreds of thousands to his lead protection lawyer, Alex Spiro, for his work on Adams’ now-dismissed federal corruption case.
“Unless you guys are chipping in money, why are you asking me?” he replied to a reporter’s query concerning the sizable unpaid invoice at a weekly press briefing.
“I have a relationship with my attorneys, and my relationship with my attorney is my relationship with my attorney,” Adams continued. “… And how I pay off my legal fees is between Eric Adams and his attorney.”
The mayor’s authorized protection belief, which he has used to cowl authorized charges associated to his bribery and marketing campaign finance fraud case, has been charged practically $5 million in whole by his legal professionals and others concerned in defending him. Practically half of that has been charged by Spiro’s agency, however the belief has solely raised about $1.9 million thus far, which means some $3 million of these charges are sitting unpaid, in line with filings launched this week.
Meantime, the mayor has not obtained a single donation to his belief since December, the filings additionally confirmed.
Requested Thursday if the hundreds of thousands of {dollars} he owes are an ethics concern, Adams merely responded, “No.”
However Richard Briffault, a constitutional lawyer and former chairman of the town’s Conflicts of Curiosity Board, disagreed with the mayor that his authorized money owed aren’t of public concern.
“It’s always a concern when a senior public official has a large debt to a person who might have an interest in [the official’s] government decisions,” Briffault mentioned.
Briffault was the pinnacle of COIB in 2019, when the town first created the authorized protection belief system, which the board oversees.
“There’s the danger or the possibility that the debt can be repaid in other ways than actually paying it off, via favors,” he famous. “That’s always a concern with any public official who has a large debt.”
Whereas Spiro doesn’t have any identified direct pursuits with metropolis authorities enterprise, lots of his purchasers do, together with Jay-Z, who’s behind one of many largest on line casino bids at the moment pending earlier than state and metropolis authorities entities.
Spiro didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Initially Printed: April 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM EDT
