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- [00:01]
Elise Hu
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- [00:32]
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Quinta Jurecic
Been on hold to make a doctor's appointment for 23 minutes now. The automated voice has told me 47 times that my call is very important to them. I'm starting to think that they don't think my call is important at all.
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- [01:14]
Isabella Royo
I'm Isabella Royo, intern at LawFair, with an episode from the Lawfare archive for January 3, 2026. Two days ago on January 1, Zoran Mamdani was sworn in as the 111th mayor of New York City. For today's archive, I chose an episode from September 30, 2024, in which Benjamin Wittes, Tyler McBrien, Quinta Juaresic, and Brandon Van Grack discussed the Justice Department's then recent indictment of Mamdani's predecessor, former New York Mayor Eric Adams, in connection with an alleged foreign influence scheme involving the Turkish government. Four months after this episode was recorded in February 2025, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bovey issued a memo ordering federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams on the basis that Adams prosecution could improperly sway the 2025 mayoral election. That the proceedings risked creating an appearance of impropriety because they were launched after Adams criticized President Biden's immigration policies and that the prosecution would distract then Mayor Adams from properly addressing illegal immigration and violent crime in New York City. The case was dismissed in April by District Judge Dale Hobby following a series of high profile resignations by federal prosecutors in New York who refused to follow Bovey's order.
- [02:40]
Benjamin Wittes
I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the Lawfare Podcast with Managing Editor Tyler McBrien, Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic, and Contributing Editor Brandon Van Grack.
- [02:55]
Quinta Jurecic
Adams had a very, very narrow victory in a very, you know, tightly contested race. And so it is extremely conceivable to me that this money could have really given Adams a potential edge here.
- [03:12]
Benjamin Wittes
Today we're talking the indictment of New York Mayor Eric Adams, the latest in the Justice Department's string of foreign interference in US Politics cases. All right, Tyler, I want to start with the indictment, which in some ways was the least surprising indictment in the history of foreign influence indictments. We've kind of been expecting it for a while, and yet it hit like a bang. So walk us through. What are the allegations here, and what is the mayor of New York accused of doing?
- [03:57]
Tyler McBrien
Sure. So, as you mentioned, I think anyone who has so much as glanced at the New York Times over the past year should not be surprised by this. Before this indictment. News of the indictment broke on Wednesday night, the 25th. Several members of Eric Adams inner circle and outer circle have been under investigation and themselves, you know, the subject of federal investigations. But on Wednesday night, the news broke that the Southern District of New York would be charging Mayor Adams. It wasn't clear until the following morning what those charges were. So he is being indicted for five counts. The first count is conspiracy to commit wire fraud, solicited foreign contributions, and accept bribes. The second is wire fraud. Then two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, and a fifth count of bribery. This all goes back to 2014, according to the indictment, when Eric Adams became the Brooklyn Borough President. At this point, throughout the next almost decade, the Southern District of New York alleges that essentially, Adams and his associates accepted and solicited contributions from Turkish nationals and some of whom were Turkish government officials in exchange for favors, including one I'm sure we'll talk about, which is that the Turkish government wanted the consulate to be in a skyscraper that did not pass the fire code. And so Adams, or someone at Adams direction then pressured the fire department to accept, sort of waive those requirements and allow the consulate to go on to open in that building. There's also an element of that Adams fraudulently accepted public matching donations to the tune of $10 million, which is part of the wire fraud account. And then some of these gifts that he also accepted in addition to funds were international plane tickets, lavish accommodations and other events and entertainment. And again, these are all the allegations.
- [06:05]
Benjamin Wittes
So, like, one of the great joys of legal journalism is that you get to read juicy indictments about gross misconduct by public officials. And Twitter, or whatever they're calling it these days and other social media were full yesterday of great snippets from this indictment. But I want to home in on the question of what Eric Adams is alleged to have done in exchange for this very substantial amount of money and support that was itself illegal.
- [06:46]
Tyler McBrien
Right. So I think it's understandable that a lot of the gifts have grabbed headlines. There's photos of one of the hotel suites that he allegedly received. But the big question, of course, is, what did he give in return? What were Turkish officials seeking? So there are three, maybe more, but three examples that that stick out. The biggest one being something that actually the New York Times had reported on before. The indictment alleges that in 2021, when Adams, I believe, was mayor elect, not yet mayor, the Turkish government wanted to open a consulate in a luxury high rise building, but it did not pass fire codes at the time. And there was a timing consideration. I believe Erdogan or another Turkish government official was going to make a visit before it could get approved. So Adams or someone at Adams direction pressured the fire department to approve the building codes and open the dangerous, I guess, in their eyes, consulate in the building. The second one being there was a community center in Brooklyn that Turkey claimed was hostile to the government, which Adams cut ties to, I believe. And then the third one being that during Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, Adams declined to make a statement because a Turkish official had asked him not to. But, Brandon and Quinta, I'm curious if there's any others that jumped out at you or if there's something I missed.
- [08:19]
Brandon Van Grack
Well, I think when you ask the question, well, why wasn't the Foreign Agents Registration act charged here? Why is Mayor Adams not being accused of being an unlawful foreign agent? The activity you described there would really be the core of such a charge. The question is really in terms of on behalf of a foreign government, what actions did one take? And I do think some of those actions are. Would at least raise questions. I anticipate it was discussed at the Department of Justice, were those actions in terms of silencing Mayor Adams with respect to Armenian genocide, sort of disassociating with a community center on behalf of a foreign government official, Would that be enough? And I suspect it's, you know, it is. It's at least something where there probably was a healthy debate. And I sort of would anticipate that we have not seen the end of patriotism, potentially charges here.
- [09:12]
Benjamin Wittes
So, Brandon, this comes at a time when we have seen a kind of remarkable spree of activity on the part of the Justice Department involving foreign influence allegations from a number of different countries. Situate this for us in the context of the other stuff that the Justice Department has been up to of late.
- [09:44]
Brandon Van Grack
It's a great starting point which is, you know, one of the reactions I think some people have when they read this indictment is why, why would the government of Turkey and Turkish businessmen sort of provide all these benefits and violate the law? What were they getting out of a, you know, a borough member, a mayor, as opposed to like a senator or someone that would be involved in sort of more foreign policy like issues? And I say that because, you know, one of the important takeaways is that there's been, as you said, a spree. There's not just this case that you see Senator Menendez, other elected officials that have now been sort of arrested and investigated for working on behalf allegedly a foreign government. And the important thing is this is not new. This is not something where foreign governments all of the sudden in 2015 decided, you know what, we should start trying to influence policy, get access to people and information. What has changed is that the US Government now considers issues like foreign interference and influence by a foreign government to be a national security issue. And the origins of that are 2016. It is when the Russian government sought to interfere in our presidential election. And largely the government, the US Government was sort of caught flat footed. Since that time, what you have seen is this focus, this realization that foreign interference, foreign influence by governments can affect our democracy really should be taken more seriously as opposed to sort of an intelligence issue. It should be an issue that we are trying to identify, disrupt and target. And so since 2016, and you know, you see the origins and the evolution through the Mueller investigation, what you see is the US Government focusing on efforts by the by foreign governments to not just interfere in the election, but interfere in our in policy, interfere in the government. And it's really been, it's tough to overstate sort of what happened before and what happened since before 2016. There were no cases, There were, there were very few cases involving the prosecution of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. There were very few foreign agent cases. That's another statute we can get into with respect to foreign campaign contributions. That's the core here. Very few cases involving it. What you've seen is multiple cases since then. Again, people talk about the Foreign Agents Registration act, foreign campaign contributions, just to give some history, some names that most people probably aren't familiar with. Ahmad Zuberi Pras, Michel Gilbert Chaguri. These are individuals in the last few years who were charged with making foreign campaign contributions. It's not that this has never happened before. It is that the US Government is now focused not just on Russia, but on efforts. And that's the origins here. That is the reason why you are seeing this case, but it's the reason why you're seeing, you know, clearly the US Government really focus its time and attention on this.
- [12:41]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah. So Quinta, following up on that, that is the broad picture, but there's also a narrow picture of the last kind of three weeks where there's been just an incredible burst of like, mostly directed at Russia, but not all of it. And, and so talk us through what's happened just in the last, you know, three weeks in the Foreign Interference Department.
- [13:15]
Quinta Jurecic
As you say, Ben, it has been. Been busy. And I, I want to start off by mentioning something that happened not in the last three weeks, which is just to clarify when Brandon referred to Press Michel. Yes, that is Press Michel from the fugees. Your ears did not deceive you. There are other musicians involved in what I'm about to say, however. So over the last few weeks, we had first an indictment of an aide to New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
- [13:41]
Brandon Van Grack
Who.
- [13:41]
Quinta Jurecic
Was indicted on allegations of essentially working with the Chinese government to shape US Policy in various ways. In particular, it seems like working to kind of quash any interest within the governor's office of mentioning things having to do with Taiwanese identity or Taiwanese independence and sort of building those relationships with the Chinese government. We also saw, and this has gotten, I think, a little more press, certainly on lawfare recently, a slew of actions from the Justice Department and other agencies as well, targeting alleged Russian interference in the 2024 election. And those as well were tied to Farah. So there was an indictment of two RT Russia Today employees for essentially alleged sort of funding, kind of a shell media corporation that paid US based influencers who, according to the Justice Department, were not aware of this connection to rt. So Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, so on and so forth, and encouraged them to put forward basically Russian propaganda on various issues, particularly involving the war in Ukraine that is linked to Farah, insofar as RT registered as a foreign agent under Farah, I believe, in 2018. And so funding this kind of shell media company essentially allowed RT to get this message out without having it affiliated with the Russian government. Then there's also been a slew of just other material related to Russian interference, some of it linked to Farah, some of it not linked to Farah. A lot of it has to do with alleged sanctions evasion related to the sanctions that were imposed on Russ after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The details are long and complicated, but I think the short version is that it's very clear that you know, not only identifying and addressing these issues as important for the government as a priority, but doing so in public is important. And I think, Brandon, I'm curious what you think of this, but it seems to me it really goes. Shay, your point about why we're suddenly seeing this, you know, explosion of government actions now. So, for example, the State Department put out an enormous amount of information alleging that RT was essentially acting on behalf of the Russian intelligence apparatus. This is separate from the indictment. There's a real focus on sort of aggressive transparency and really putting these allegations and evidence behind these allegations in front of the public.
- [16:26]
Brandon Van Grack
You know, if I could just address the timing point, because I think it's a really good one, which is the US Government is intentionally being loud right now. So the actions targeting RT and interference by the Russian government, that was intentionally done a couple months before the election to stop it, to stop the misinformation and disinformation from impact in the election and to try to create awareness. The only reason I can think of to release the charges this week is if you are aware of the fact that in New York, it's UN Week, there are all sorts of foreign officials. I assure you, the Department of Justice and the Department of State were fully aware of that. You know, many wonderful cases, including some of my previous ones, were delayed because the Department of State were concerned about the impact of the relationship with other governments. So for this to occur, while there are all these officials here, including, I am sure I have not checked the government of Turkey, is intentional. It is meant to say, you know, we are aware of what these other countries, not just Russia, other countries are doing. We are looking for it. We are willing to seek criminal charges because of it.
- [17:44]
Tyler McBrien
I just wanted to add one more thing about, you know, the government saying this out loud. In the past few weeks, I've revisited a speech from December 1st of last year that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Choi gave. It's a keynote address at the 5th National Forum on FARA, and essentially sort of laying out and touting the enhanced focus on FARA enforcement, giving hard data to it. So in terms of personnel cases, inspections, and then also justifying why, why we're doing this. So you got the sense that the audience was not just people there at the forum, but also even people beyond Americans.
- [18:25]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah. And I will just add that yesterday, which is to say Thursday, as we record, Politico reported that the Justice Department had indicted a group of IRGC hackers in connection with the theft of material from the Trump campaign. So, you know, some of this is not even framed in Farah terms. These will be presumably CFAA violations alleged right along the lines that the Mueller folks indicted GRU people for the hacks against the Hillary Clinton campaign. So just because it's not a Farah or a foreign agents indictment doesn't mean it's not an election interference indictment. All right, so let's go with all of that as background. Let's go back to Mr. Adams, Tyler. It seems to me that. So, first of all, one of the striking things about the indictment to me is that the conduct begins a really long time ago, that if you take this document seriously, he's been on the take from Turkey for a really long time. What do we know about this from an allegations point of view?
- [19:51]
Tyler McBrien
Right. So, I mean, one thing that this indictment I think helps to answer is a question that New Yorkers have had for a long time, which is, why is he so obsessed with Turkey? And a lot of the answer has to do with what he's received, you know, in response. And also to your point, about election interference, it's not just about election interference. It's also about interfering in policy once someone is elected. To your question, the allegations go back nearly a decade, starting in 2014 as Brooklyn Borough President and running through today through his mayoral campaign and then as mayor. The total amount of international plane tickets, accommodations, total up to more than $100,000. There's a table, actually on page 40 of all of the destinations, the amount, and then there's a column which just says disclosed, question mark. And down the line, of course, it says no. So it's a long indictment covering, you know, a long scope of time. And the other aspect that I mentioned, again, is the $10 million of government funds from the public matching fund. Right.
- [21:04]
Benjamin Wittes
And that is essentially making up donors who are not, in fact, lawfully entitled to donate by way of getting the state matching funds for each contribution.
- [21:18]
Tyler McBrien
Correct. So the indictment alleges that Turkish nationals essentially funneled their donations through. Through several, you know, broke it up between several people. So say a Turkish national is donating $10, broke it up to, you know, $1 over 10 people. But it's important to also note that it's not a one to one matching. I think it's for every $1, there's an $8 match from this fund. So that's why it's not like it was $500,000 from. From Turkish nationals and then $500,000 from the city. It was. It was the one to eight ratio.
- [21:54]
Brandon Van Grack
Yeah. And just to just. Just to break up that last piece, which is there are two aspects here of the campaign contribution issue, which is one is foreign persons, non US Persons, cannot donate to a campaign, period. The second piece was in New York, there is a matching program. So in essence, the violation of the foreign campaign contribution that were funneled through US Persons was magnified by the matching program. So they're sort of. And I say this because what they're saying is sort of the. The core of this, which has been what you're getting at is like they were accepting money from Turkey and they weren't allowed to. But the impact on New Yorkers was magnified by the fact that you have this unique matching program. So it wasn't just, you know, a half a million or a million, whatever the actual number was, but it was magnified substantially because of the generous program that New York has.
- [22:48]
Quinta Jurecic
I think it's also important to point out, you know, this is an example of Turkey, well, I was going to say getting a lot of bang for their buck, although I don't know how much bang there was, but the buck may have been more influential here potentially than in other cases. So when we talk about foreign election interference in 2016, for example, I think it's really difficult to say to what extent that did or didn't have an effect. Elections are big and complicated. It's a lot of people voting. Who knows why people make up their minds in this case. I mean, it's a local election, there's less money involved that additional. That $10 million in matching funds. I imagine, obviously the New York media market is pretty expensive, but could potentially have made a real difference. And Adams had a very, very narrow victory in a very tightly contested race. And turnout, I believe, Tyler, correct me if I'm wrong, was not super high. So it is extremely conceivable to me that this money could given Adams a potential edge here in a way that I think is it's much harder to draw that kind of direct line in a presidential election or something like that.
- [24:07]
Tyler McBrien
I agree with all that, and I think another reason why the matching funds program allegation is grabbing so many headlines and why it really irks New Yorkers is because the purpose of this program is both to allow candidates who don't have deep pockets to run and to get campaign funds, but also to incentivize candidates to engage with average New Yorkers through, you know, getting more small dollar donations. So the great irony here is that this was then used not only for, you know, to not engage with average New Yorkers but to not engage with New Yorkers at all. To not engage with Americans at all. So that's why I think this is really rankling so many people in the city.
- [24:54]
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- [24:55]
Quinta Jurecic
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Tyler McBrien
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- [25:23]
Brandon Van Grack
Today.
- [25:26]
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- [25:31]
Brandon Van Grack
Do they ever actually clean the ball pit at these kids play gyms?
- [25:35]
Tyler McBrien
Or is my kid just swimming in.
- [25:36]
Brandon Van Grack
A vat of bacteria, catching whatever cootie.
- [25:39]
Tyler McBrien
Of the day is breeding in there?
- [25:40]
Brandon Van Grack
A cootie that'll probably take down our whole family.
- [25:45]
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- [25:58]
Trivia Host
Today's trivia quiz is on mobile games. All right, I'm very excited about this one. I'm going to give you a few hints. Ready?
- [26:06]
Quinta Jurecic
Ready.
- [26:07]
Trivia Host
This game has no ads and no need for WI Fi to play.
- [26:11]
Quinta Jurecic
Wait, so does it cost a lot of money?
- [26:13]
Benjamin Wittes
Nope.
- [26:14]
Trivia Host
It's completely free to play.
- [26:16]
Quinta Jurecic
What? No way.
- [26:17]
Trivia Host
It has amazing graphics and they recently added a bunch of new mini games.
- [26:23]
Quinta Jurecic
Hold on. Is that Royal Kingdom?
- [26:25]
Trivia Host
Yes. Bingo. So if you haven't played Royal Kingdom yet, go to the App Store or Google Play and download it for free.
- [26:35]
Benjamin Wittes
So, Brandon, I want to go back to a point that you made earlier, which is that this is not new and that there's really a pivot point in 2016 in which we just made a decision that we care about it. Should we assume that there's an Eric Adams in every congressional district, in every city that, you know, if you blink twice, you'll miss the government of Tajikistan pouring money into, you know, the Los Angeles mayor's race? Or I mean, how widespread should we assume, you know, foreign influence efforts in political in our political systems are? Or conversely, should we assume it's a discrete number of known bad actors who do this covertly and other governments kind of do it more overtly, that is Bibi Netanyahu shows up and gives a speech in Congress or President Zelensky shows up and meets with the presidential candidates. I believe he's meeting with Trump today. How should we understand the scope and reach of COVID election interference efforts?
- [27:58]
Brandon Van Grack
You know, it's a great question, and I fear I can't give you a great answer, but I'll try. Which is, I think it's difficult to define the scope of it. I'll say that it is far more pervasive to find elected officials who are, in fact, wonderful public servants who are not doing this. I think Senator Menendez is an aberration. I think regardless of where you sit in the intelligence community, law enforcement, the public, reading those allegations are jaw dropping, in that case, for example, and including the allegations here are jaw dropping. I do think they're the exception. I think what is true as well, though, is that before 2016, you were more likely to see this as the US government as as long as there wasn't sort of theft of information, you know, trying to target classified information, this was more sort of things to track. And if other laws were violated, not foreign interference or influence laws, if other laws were violated, then I think you'd see an escalation. Again, I think this was treated more in the intelligence sort of gathering sort of interest category than national security category, and in part because that therefore makes it difficult to compare apples to apples. I mean, as I've noted what you've seen with Senator Menendez, Mayor Adams, like, you do not have a long history of elected officials. You have people connected to elected officials. You do not have a long history of elected officials charged with interference and sort of influence by foreign governments this way. And I think it's difficult to imagine that this just happened, that all of the sudden there's something unique about where we are today. So I do think that this has happened before, but I think the reason we're hearing about it now really, really is because of the focus as opposed to I think there's been sort of a pivot with respect to how foreign governments are seeking to target electricity officials.
- [29:51]
Quinta Jurecic
I think there's something really important to underline here, which is also that one of the things that I think is damaging about this kind of behavior in terms of democratic health. And this goes both to Brandon, what you were saying and Tyler, what you were saying about how these fun matching friends are meant to encourage political engagement among New Yorkers is that the more that people who are facing these kinds of charges make the argument that everyone does it, or the more that there is a perception that, you know, this is just how things work I think that's really damaging to, you know, public confidence and trust in government, because, as Brendan says, you know, this is, not. Everyone is not doing this. This is an aberration. But the more it's successfully presented by the people facing these charges as something that is within the norm, the more that perception grows. And I think you really saw that in some of the comments that Trump made around the engagement that his 2016 campaign had with Russian actors, trying to give the campaign an edge, where he said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with this. I don't know if he literally said everyone does it, but he made repeated comments to the extent of, of course, why wouldn't I take that advantage? There's a real sense of I'm acting within the norm, everyone is corrupt, everyone's getting theirs. You, you know, I'm just, you know, trying to get some for myself. And I think that that is profoundly corrosive. And so perhaps you could argue to the extent that we have these indictments that are kind of trying to draw a line and say, you know, this is happening and it's unacceptable. And in the case of Menendez, for example, I mean, he was drummed out of the Senate. So as, as a former constituent, I consider that a great victory. I think that that kind of thing is really important. So it'll certainly be interest where Adams goes from here on that front, if I could.
- [31:47]
Brandon Van Grack
It's a great point. And you know, just to emphasize the, the, the. Your second point, which is, I agree in terms of considering this to be the nor norm, is incredibly corrosive. I think it's the reason why what the Department of Justice and the US Government is doing now is so critical, because it is saying, hey, I don't know whether this happened before, but we won't tolerate it now. And it is remark. I mean, this, this Department of Justice, and I'm particularly sort of passionate about this, they have now charged a sitting senator, mayor of New York, sitting member of Congress. They have charged a former President of the United States. They have charged the sitting president's son. They have opened an investigation on the former Vice President of the United States. They opened an investigation on the sitting president, United States. That's remarkable. That is the Department of Justice. And there are critiques that people make about some of those investigations. But that is a Department of justice that says if we see concerns, issues with elected officials, we are going to dedicate the time and resources to deal with them. And I say that because I would, in the event you probably have a better arc of history than I do. I don't think you have seen an attorney general that has probably dealt with issues like that in terms of sort of politically challenged environments. It's reflexive to go to sort of Nixon. But I think that if you look at sort of the range of issues, including the desperate issues, I think it's really difficult to come up with an example where the Department of Justice has really sort of across the political spectrum been willing to take on cases like this.
- [33:19]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah, certainly the scope and range of them. And then when you add to them the non classified cases, the cases that don't involve, you know, any foreign nexus like 1200, January 6th cases, I mean, the, the volume is really astonishing. So, Tyler, what is Mr. Adams saying in his own defense? I assume he has not, you know, held a press conference in which he has apologized and sworn allegiance to the pkk.
- [33:58]
Tyler McBrien
In fact, no. In short, he is digging in. He's fighting it. He's denying everything. He did have a press conference, however, which was, I believe yesterday. It was, it was on, on Thursday and it was a mess. It was held outside. It was very difficult to hear what he was saying. They clearly had not cordoned off protesters far enough. It was a shouting match. The press conference ended when the crowds started chanting resign, which is probably not something you want at your press conference. At one point someone shouted, I'm Puerto Rican. It was just, it was all over the place. But just as the indictment was not a surprise, his, his denials shouldn't come as a surprise either. He's been sort of seeding this narrative for months now as people around him have been investigated, that he follows the law. He tells everyone to follow the law. He's a former police officer himself. And so this he says, you know, adds to the reasons why you should believe that he follows the law. He knows the law. So he's. It seems that he's, he's going to dig in and fight this. I don't see him voluntarily resigning anytime soon.
- [35:05]
Benjamin Wittes
And what are the. I read somewhere or saw somewhere that the governor of New York has some power to suspend him or remove him. What are the mechanisms for getting rid of a mayor in New York if it comes to that?
- [35:23]
Tyler McBrien
I don't know. I don't know the full details beyond that. I do know that the governor does have a way of doing it. I can tell you then what happens next, which is that the city's public advocate becomes an interim mayor of sorts. So that's a man named Jumani Williams in New York and Then from there, there's a special election. And as a fun addendum, there is reporting that suggests that Andrew Cuomo might step in and throw his hat in the ring to be the next mayor. And then I think it's probably likely that Jumani Williams will also run. People have thrown around the name Maya Wiley, so candidates of years past will probably come out of the woodwork.
- [36:01]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, Brandon, one of the things about a situation in which you have a lot of law that sits around largely unused, and then all of a sudden you have a decision to use it aggressively is you end up with some bad cases. And, you know, some of the cases you mentioned that some of the cases the government has brought has gotten some criticism. You know, in the Greg Craig case, they actually lost one. There has been some criticism of the case against Sumi Terry, who, full disclosure, is an acquaintance of mine. I'm curious whether we should think of these as situations where the government is exploring the outer edge of how it can and can't use these statutes and this is a push pull that's just going to happen, or whether we should understand there being Farah is kind of a broadly worded statute. Like, how do you know as a, as a politician who just wants to take a lot of trips on Turkish Airlines and, you know, do what he's told by, by Turkish businessmen, how do you know what you can and can't get away with that, that the Justice Department is going to at some point decide is a, is a Faro problem?
- [37:32]
Brandon Van Grack
Well, you know, whether you're dealing with the Foreign Agents Registration act or sort of foreign campaign contributions that charges related to foreign interference or foreign influence, they can be challenging cases. And I think part of the reason is for criminal statutes that you need to have the right mental state mens rea. And so you have to be aware and know that you are violating the law. And I think one of the pieces that I think sort of jumps out at the allegations against the mayor are that you have many instances that are detailed where you have individuals who are seeking to mask what they are doing, deleting text messages, creating what are alleged to be sort of false invoices, creating passwords to phones so that they can't be unlocked, their sort of activity. And that activity, really it's not charged what it is. The reason it's there, it's raises the question and you see this all the time in cases. Well, why would you do that if you believed your conduct was lawful? It's the same reason why you often see on the cases, Ben, that you mentioned, there's often charges of false statements to the FBI. It's not just that there was a false statement. It was, why would you lie to the FBI unless you thought you had done something that was wrong? So that's one of the things that jumps off, jumps out at on this indictment is sort of the numerous instances over a long period of time where there are individuals who seem to want to hide their conduct or delete communications. And perhaps the second point I'll make, because that gets us some of the questions about potentially the strength of this case is it's also remarkable the number of people that were involved here, the number of witnesses. We don't know who is cooperating, but I think it is very safe to say that there are some people identified here who are cooperating. There are also probably some people here who may in fact also be charged, if not now, then potentially in the future. And I think that's another piece when it's when you ask the question of how strong is your case, the more you have witnesses, the more you can say, this defendant told me this, the stronger your case. And this again, because this happened over a nine year period or almost a decade. There are a lot of people, every straw donor, every individual that donated in the United States, you know, people who probably themselves may not ultimately have criminal exposure, may not face it, just getting them to testify, you know, why did you make this donation? Well, this person told me he would send me $2,000. Like you're. You have dozens of people who are. Seems like, you know, set to testify. And so I think that's another thing that sort of jumps out, I think, at this, at this indictment.
- [40:13]
Benjamin Wittes
Yeah. And just to be clear, I did not mean to suggest that this was a Farah case, which it isn't. It's a bribery and campaign, foreign and straw donors case. And I was using Farah there as a sort of shorthand for all things foreign influence, which, dear listener, you should never do, because Farah is a very specific statute that deals with a particular range of bad acts. Tyler, the floor is yours.
- [40:48]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, I just wanted to add a specific colorful example to what Brandon was saying about the lengths and the literality of the concealment. So this is one of my favorite passages from the indictment. It's alleged that on June 22, 2021, Adams, through an unnamed staffer of his requested Turkish Airlines manager to book flight to Istanbul for the. For the mayor. And there's a transcript of them negotiating the, quote, real price. So. So that the Staffer asks, how much does he owe? Please let them call me and I will make a payment. The manager says it is very expensive because it is last minute. I am working on a discount. Later the airline manager says, I'm going to charge $50. The staffer says, no, that wouldn't work. No, dear, $50. Quote a proper price. And the manager says, how much should I charge? With a smiley emoticon. And then, then in a very stunning passage, the Adam staffer says his every step is being watched right now. $1,000 or so. Let it be somewhat real. We don't want them to say he is flying for free. At the moment, the media's attention is on Eric. So I think that's a pretty good illustration of some of what Brandon was saying.
- [42:05]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, so I want to ask about what other stuff is percolating in this department. We've had major Iranian election interference. We've had an ongoing spree of Russian interference. We've had a whole lot of allegations not about Chinese election interference per se, but about influence operations and political interference as Quinta described with the governor in the office of the governor of New York. We've had now this Turkey matter, which is of course in some ways a bit of a throwback to the Flynn period issues in the Mueller investigation which also involved Turkish political interference. Brandon, are there other countries of particular concern when you think about, I mean North Korea does all kinds of terrible stuff, but as far as I know it doesn't do, you know, foreign influence and election operations. What are the other countries that you think of as sort of problem children from a point of view of American election interference and political interference?
- [43:25]
Brandon Van Grack
Well, you know, part of the answer is that, you know, I don't think Turkey was the focus of this investigation. I think it just happened to be that is who connected with now Mayor Adams. And, and I think in terms of like what to expect one, one important sort of add on is that the U.S. attorney for Southern District of New York talked about the fact that this investigation is ongoing. There was a search of Mayor Adams residence that occurred the same day that the charges were announced. And so one thing is to expect, I expect there will be additional charges here. And we may, you know, Ben, just so that, you know, maybe we'll play this again so that your fair reference will be corrected. But it is still possible there may be charges related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act. There's another related statute I think would be potentially more likely. But the point is it's not over. I think you are going to see a superseding indictment. So that's with respect to here, this is not the end of the conversation in terms of other countries, I think it's important to note again, Russia and China does get a lot of attention. The whole point of this though is that it really is country agnostic. That concern is foreign governments trying to influence policy or politicians covertly. And I say this because one of the cases I mentioned, Ahmad Zuberi, which is not a name that will be familiar to most of your listeners, it was a political fundraiser and venture capitalist in California. He was pled guilty to doing influence work on behalf of Sri Lanka. There are other, you know, Egypt is another country that has been brought in. I don't think it's because the US Government is lining up all the countries that are seeking to influence and said these are the top 20. I think Russia, China, Iran are different. But when you go beyond that, it is more the fact that this issue of foreign interference, foreign influence is a top priority. So you have a lot more resources now that are looking at everything.
- [45:14]
Tyler McBrien
And just to add one point there, going back to the December speech at the fifth forum on Farah, the deputy Assistant Attorney General said just this. She said that the obligations of Farah are not limited to those who work on behalf of such countries. She had names specifically China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. But she said when they enforce the law, they do so in an even handed way regardless of race or country.
- [45:38]
Quinta Jurecic
Yeah. Another example of course, which I didn't mention was Representative Henry Cuellar, who is a Democrat from South Texas who was indicted in May on Farah charges over influence from Azerbaijan. And of course, Ben, the indictment that you mentioned earlier of Sumi Terry involved interactions with South Korea. Even in the Adams case, there appear to be more countries that were involved. So there was a headline from the New York Times that there were six countries that were suspected to be influencing Adams or potentially influencing Adams. Obviously here we only have Turkey, but the others were. Let me see if I can list them all. So China, Israel, Qatar, South Korea. And drumroll please. Uzbekistan. I will note that while preparing for this episode, I found an article in the Times of Central Asia that simply reads, uzbekistan implicated in US Investigation of New York Mayor Eric Adams. It remains unclear, I think, what Uzbekistan may or may not have been doing. The same is true with the other countries named there at the time suggested that the Qatar portion of the investigation may have to do with tickets that Adams received to the 2022 World cup in that country. But I definitely did think when this indictment came out and Turkey was the only country at the center of it, that there might be more shoes left to drop here.
- [47:04]
Tyler McBrien
As everyone knows, New York is the Tashkent of America.
- [47:09]
Benjamin Wittes
We are going to leave it there. Thank you Brandon Quinta and Tyler for joining us today and we will keep an eye on this and other foreign influence foreign interference cases as they continue to pour in. The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad free versions of this and other Lawfare Podcasts by becoming a material supporter of Lawfare using our website, lawfairmedia.org support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters. Have you rated and reviewed the Lawfare Podcast? If not, please do so. So wherever you get your podcasts and look out for our other podcast offerings. This podcast is edited by Jen Pata. Our theme music is from Alibi Music. As always, thanks for listening.
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