Mayor Eric Adams zeroed in on his dismissed corruption indictment on Tuesday — blasting investigators who alleged in recently-released court documents that he concealed the location of his personal cellphone, and claiming that his dyslexia caused him to forget the phone’s passcode.
“I’m dyslexic, I forget numbers, that’s a byproduct,” Hizzoner said at his weekly off-topic press conference on May 12 while explaining the forgotten password. He added that he “always gives numbers to my staff.”
In this case, Adams claims he forgot the passcode after changing it so as to prevent his staff from going into his phone and deleting potential evidence after his top campaign fundraiser had her home raided by federal agents on Nov. 2, 2023, according to the court filings. He told federal agents through his attorneys that he changed the passcode from four to six digits and that the new one read “936639,” according to court records, a code that turned out to be incorrect.
The mayor made the comments in response to amNewYork’s question regarding 1,700 pages of documents that the Justice Department released last week after being ordered to do so by Manhattan Federal Judge Dale Ho — the judge who oversaw Adams’ case.
The newly revealed records included affidavits, search warrants, and exhibits of evidence against the mayor, which were part of his federal corruption case that Ho dropped last month at the behest of the Trump DOJ.
The agents sought to take Adams’ phones because they believed the devices contained evidence of his communications surrounding illegal straw donations from Turkish nationals that were a central part of the charges against him. He allegedly solicited and accepted the illegal donations along with unreported foreign gifts in exchange for official favors.
Adams also bristled on May 13 at an FBI agent’s allegations in one of the newly revealed affidavits that he may have lied about the location of his personal cellphone when federal law enforcement personnel asked him to turn over his electronic devices following an event near Washington Square Park on Nov. 6, 2023.
The agent wrote that while Adams claimed to have left the phone at City Hall when the FBI searched him, location data associated with the phone appeared to show it traveling north from City Hall to 29th Street at that time. After that point, it stopped providing location data, which the agent wrote meant the phone was either turned off, placed in airplane mode, or that its battery had died.
“Location information for Adams’ Personal Cellphone is inconsistent with the representations Adams made,” the agent wrote.
However, when asked about the agent’s assertions on Tuesday, Adams was defiant in denying his account.
“If someone stated that I had a phone on me based on the GPS data, they’re liars,” Adams said. “The GPS data clearly pings and shows you where phones are; they had the evidence that they did not have.”
The mayor charged that federal investigators were attempting to “humiliate me, to embarrass me, to display me [sic]” in their investigation. He pointed to another revelation in the court filings that they were considering seizing the mayor’s phones at the finish line of the 2023 New York City Marathon, but ultimately decided against it.
“I don’t see why no one is factoring in, they wanted to take my phones at the goddamn marathon, folks,” he said.
Adams continues to point to Ho’s decision to drop the case as proof that he did nothing wrong, even though the judge wrote that his ruling had nothing to do with the substance of the charges.
Additionally, Ho appeared to side with allegations that Adams’ attorney made a “bargain” with Trump’s DOJ to drop his case—exchanging his cooperation with the president’s immigration crackdown for scuttling his charges.
