Metropolis Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez and a former senior NYPD official with reputed hyperlinks to China’s Communist Social gathering have agreed to pay fines after admitting they misused their authorities positions by campaigning and fundraising for ex-Vice President Kamala Harris and Mayor Adams, new data reveal.
Rodriguez, who has served as Adams’ Division of Transportation head since January 2022, will cough up a $1,750 effective for urging New Yorkers throughout a DOT “Summer Streets” occasion within the Bronx final August to vote for Harris within the 2024 presidential election.
In a disposition from the Conflicts of Curiosity Board launched Thursday, Rodriguez acknowledged he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the DOT brand and his title throughout the occasion and delivered remarks “in which I urged the assembled crowd to support Kamala Harris for president.”
The disposition doesn’t elaborate on precisely what Rodriguez advised the group. However the paperwork says Rodriguez understood that by delivering these remarks in that setting he violated metropolis ethics legal guidelines barring public servants from pursuing “personal activities” on metropolis time or utilizing any municipal titles or gear, like clothes, for “any non-city purpose.”
The board famous within the paperwork that Rodriguez delivered the Harris stump speech regardless of being beforehand instructed by metropolis ethics officers concerning the “need to separate his work as DOT commissioner from his personal activities.” The document additionally states the effective speaks to the truth that Rodriguez, an ex-Metropolis Council member, is “a high level and long-serving public servant who should be held to a high standard of compliance.”
Project – BKLYN ADAMS
Theodore Parisienne/for New York Day by day Information
Eric Adams, left, and Ydanis Rodriguez. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Day by day Information)
Additionally Thursday, the conflicts board launched a disposition revealing Gui An Lin, an ex-assistant NYPD commissioner who served as a prime aide to ex-Police Commissioner Edward Caban, has agreed to pay a $5,000 effective for serving to Adams’ 2025 marketing campaign solicit 15 donations totaling $4,100 in June 2024.
Gui, who left the NYPD in January, collected the donations regardless that he had been advised by the board in March 2024 that as an assistant commissioner he’s thought of a considerable policymaker who by legislation “can not fundraise for a candidate for mayor,” the paperwork says.
As within the Rodriguez case, the board wrote it slapped Gui with the effective as a result of he had been beforehand warned to not have interaction in sure political actions and was “a high-level law enforcement officer who should be held to a high standard.”
Gui’s January departure from the NYPD got here after stories revealed he has served in management roles in U.S.-based teams linked to China’s “United Front,” a motion funded and directed by Beijing’s regime used to unfold communist affect throughout the globe, in keeping with American authorities research.
Gui reportedly additionally has shut ties to Winnie Greco, an ex-top Adams aide who resigned from Metropolis Corridor final yr after her house was raided by federal investigators as a part of a string of corruption probes that additionally ensnared the mayor himself.
A lawyer for Gui didn’t instantly return requests for remark Thursday.
The effective in opposition to Gui comes after Adams’ reelection crew belatedly final yr disclosed Gui as a so-called fundraising “intermediary” in response to the Marketing campaign Finance Board flagging it had failed to take action. In data, Adams’ marketing campaign reported the 15 donations Gui bundled for the mayor all got here in on the identical day, June 30, 2024. Most of them had been within the quantity of $250, the data present.
Initially Revealed: April 17, 2025 at 3:23 PM EDT
