(Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s not a bribe, it’s a gratuity!
That is the actual argument New York Mayor Eric Adams makes in his motion to dismiss the bribery count in the federal indictment unsealed last Thursday.
“First, the statute prohibits only bribes, not gratuities,” he argues, pointing to Count V, which charges him with bribery under 18 USC §666. He adds that “Importantly, gratuities come in two forms: (i) something ‘given after the fact, as ‘thanks’ for an act but not in exchange for it,’ and (ii) something ‘given with a nonspecific intent to ‘curry favor’ with the public official to whom it was given.’”
The argument is that, yes, Adams accepted free travel perks and straw man donations for the Turkish government. But that wasn’t connected to any official act, and thus it doesn’t count as a bribe. And, fine, okay, he did lean on the Fire Department Commissioner in September of 2021 to approve a building permit so that the newly constructed Turkish House would be open in time for Turkish President Erdagon’s visit. But he was only Brooklyn Borough President at the time, not the mayor, having won the Democratic primary but not the general election. So texting the Fire Department Commissioner wasn’t an official act, it was just, uh, friendly advice. So there was no quid, and no quo, and certainly no pro.
And thanks to the Supreme Court, it just might work.
Chief Justice Roberts and his pals have been on a years-long crusade to legalize political corruption. In 2016, they reversed the conviction of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, who took money and favors from a supplement salesman and talked up his product, but didn’t do any “official act” to support him, so it was totes cool. In 2024, the conservative justices tossed the bribery conviction of the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who awarded $1.1 million in trucking contracts to a company in 2013, and then took a $13,000 check the following year.
“‘[G]ratuities after the official act are not the same as bribes before the official act,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote cheerfully for the Court’s six conservatives. He did concede that “gratuities can sometimes also raise ethical and appearance concerns,” but then scoffed that federal regulation would criminalize a Christmas gift to the mailman, conveniently ignoring the actual payoff at issue in the case before him.
Plus there was that whole unpleasantness where the Court ruled that you have to let presidents do crimes or they’ll be hindered from boldly mounting a coup. So perhaps it’s unsurprising that Adams is making this “it’s not a bribe, it’s a sparkling gratuity” argument. After all, he did have the forethought to begin taking favors from Turkish government agents early in his career, before he had anything real to offer. So perhaps that will insulate him from charges of bribery now, despite the fact that the Turkish official who requested Adams’s intercession claimed it was “his turn” to support his Turkish handlers, to which Adams’s staffer responded, “I know.”
Perhaps most amazingly, Adams argues that the FDNY Commissioner was threatening to fire his subordinates if they didn’t greenlight the permit for Turkish House, rather than suggesting that Adams would fire them all in November if he didn’t get what he wanted. Maybe Curtis Sliwa could have pulled it off!
In short, they’ve got chutzpah filing this thing, and it probably won’t work with Judge Dale Ho. But with Chief Justice Roberts? Probably.
US v. Adams [Docket via Court Listener]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.