The first signs of trouble for Adams came on November 2, 2023, with an ominous round of raids targeting people close to City Hall. While he was traveling to Washington, D.C., for a White House meeting with mayors about the migrant crisis, FBI agents were executing search warrants at the homes of three Adams associates, including his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, for dealings involving the Turkish government.
In New Jersey, agents took cell phones and other materials from the homes of Rana Abbasova, director of protocol in the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs, and Cenk Öcal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who served on the mayor-elect’s transition committee. Agents left Suggs’s home in Crown Heights with three iPhones, two laptops, and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams,” the New York Times reported.
Alerted to the Suggs raid by a staff member, Adams turned around after landing in D.C. and boarded a flight back to New York. He told reporters the following week that he had skipped the migrant summit out of concern for 25-year-old Suggs. On the following Monday, FBI agents approached Adams as he left an event at New York University and confiscated two cell phones and an iPad that were in his possession.
“As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law … I have nothing to hide,” the mayor said afterward, a refrain he used repeatedly, with variations, as the Turkey probe advanced and other investigations materialized.
Another sweep came on September 4. Federal agents conducted early-morning raids at the homes of senior city officials including NYPD commissioner Edward Caban; Deputy Mayor for public safety Philip Banks III; his brother, schools chancellor David Banks; first deputy mayor Sheena Wright, David Banks’s fiancée; and a top mayoral adviser, Timothy Pearson. Caban’s identical twin brother, James, and a younger Banks sibling, Terence, also had phones confiscated.
The coordinated raids came in support of two investigations unrelated to Turkey but run primarily out of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.
One probe is looking into a consulting firm run by Terence Banks, whose fortunes rose when his older brothers joined the Adams administration, and the other is focused on whether James Caban had used his family ties to the police commissioner to gain work for his security business, according to news reports.
Edward Caban resigned ten days after the raid. His brother and the Banks siblings have all denied wrongdoing. David Banks later resigned as schools chancellor.
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