Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome, Dick It Happened Here a podcast where
Speaker 1: we're bringing Shitty Mayor one Day back to celebrate an
Speaker 1: incredibly special occasion, which is the unbelievably funny federal indictment
Speaker 1: of what New York Mayor Eric Adams with me talk about.
Speaker 1: This is Garrison Davis, is James Stout and and we
Speaker 1: have a New York expert, our fellow trade unionist, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Joey pat who works on what we Love and Afterlives.
Speaker 2: Joey, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Hey, thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
Speaker 3: I hope I can. I can provide some insight to
Speaker 3: New York City and everything that's been happening lately.
Speaker 4: The Eric Adams news really is kind of the most
Speaker 4: positive piece of duce that we've had the past month.
Speaker 2: It's been a really bad it's keeping me going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I gotta say I found out
Speaker 3: the news of the indictment. I was at like a
Speaker 3: gay bar near me, like at a like queer Pool event,
Speaker 3: and like everybody got the news at the same time,
Speaker 3: and it.
Speaker 2: Was one of the funniest.
Speaker 3: Ways to learn that Eric Adams has been a yacht
Speaker 3: was that was the like the most joy I've seen
Speaker 3: from a from a group of New Yorkers in a while.
Speaker 2: What a beauty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so I want to I want to open
Speaker 1: the floor up to Eric Adams stories. But first I
Speaker 1: need to complain about the fact that so I have
Speaker 1: I have long as a proud Chicago Wan who has
Speaker 1: now fled Chicago for Portland. I have long made fun
Speaker 1: of New York for being a Tier two Chinese city
Speaker 1: that thinks that it's the greatest city in the world.
Speaker 1: And then I learned they didn't have trash cans, which
Speaker 1: pushed this at like, this is not even like a
Speaker 1: Tier five. This is a level of trash collection that
Speaker 1: you see in like rural HOOBEI like, what the fuck Britain.
Speaker 2: The United Kingdom where we got rid of trash cans too?
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's not true though, because luckily Eric
Speaker 4: Adams didn't make the trash cans.
Speaker 2: It's just what is going on.
Speaker 3: The first American city to ever think of this idea.
Speaker 3: I'm for context. I am also in a unique position
Speaker 3: here because I'm from Chicago, and yeah, oftentimes get my
Speaker 3: friends and family that still live in Chicago confused as
Speaker 3: to why I live out here. I do love New York.
Speaker 3: I I it is a great city to live in.
Speaker 3: But these are the kind of moments we have where
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I honestly, And then.
Speaker 1: Think about this.
Speaker 2: Eric Adams stuff too.
Speaker 1: It's like the stuff he's so, there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: second federal indictment with more people in it, but the
Speaker 1: first one it's kind of brush league shit by Chicago standards.
Speaker 2: Like like if you compare this.
Speaker 1: To like like Rob Lagoyevitch trying to sell off, like
Speaker 1: trying to sell Obama's Senate seat, It's like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been saying New York wants.
Speaker 3: To be Chicago. They're starting a second city here too.
Speaker 3: Oh no, No, the ads in the subway and every
Speaker 3: time takes away a part of my soul. Like I'm like,
Speaker 3: you cannot claim that that is us.
Speaker 4: It just means there's gonna be even more insufferable people.
Speaker 2: This this sucks. Yeah, a second second city has hit
Speaker 2: the Towers. Another great Rag Adams moment. Eric Adams hit
Speaker 2: the Towers.
Speaker 4: No no, but he had he had this great interview
Speaker 4: where he was asked to summarize like, what.
Speaker 2: Makes New York great in one word?
Speaker 4: And he gave the answer, h New York, which is
Speaker 4: two words, and that explained it's because it's the only
Speaker 4: city where you can wake up and have nine to
Speaker 4: eleven happen and also open up a small business. One
Speaker 4: of the one of the funniest Eric Adams moments I've
Speaker 4: ever seen till until he was indicted, which is now
Speaker 4: the new funniest Aracatams moment, which we should probably get
Speaker 4: to because this is not a short indictment.
Speaker 5: Wait are we're doing all Eric adams favorite moments yet?
Speaker 5: Because I have a fat we got run?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Mine?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Do you want to hit his with yous? Jerry?
Speaker 3: Mine's definitely. I think the ongoing saga of just whether
Speaker 3: or not he's a vegan and the fact that he
Speaker 3: repeatedly claims he's a vegan and thinks that vegan.
Speaker 2: I didn't know this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a vegan. He talks a lot about how
Speaker 3: he's a vegan and all the health benefits and how
Speaker 3: it's he has a lot of weird like beliefs about
Speaker 3: health and stuff that have come out over his you know,
Speaker 3: mayor old run. But apparently he's not actually a vegan
Speaker 3: because he's been seen like eating chicken on camera and
Speaker 3: like that the weird video of his apartment when he
Speaker 3: was running. That was the Brooklyn apartment that he may
Speaker 3: or may not live in, Like there was like some
Speaker 3: sort of meat product in the fridge or something. There's
Speaker 3: been a whole thing about how like he maybe and
Speaker 3: he's like admitted that he's like eaten meat sometimes, Like
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, well, you know, I'll just have like
Speaker 3: a little nibble, like it's it's it doesn't count. Chicken
Speaker 3: is a vegan?
Speaker 4: What do you mean he identifies as a vegan vegan.
Speaker 5: He's like some kind of like like sixteenth century Catholic
Speaker 5: you know where they have all these weird exceptions for
Speaker 5: fish and like right right, that's.
Speaker 3: A repent and then whatever to confass and and then
Speaker 3: he's getting he gets you get a card back.
Speaker 2: That's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, Jewey's
Speaker 2: Jewi's kind of mentioned mine.
Speaker 1: But the fact that he definitely is from New Jersey,
Speaker 1: which I think is what allowed him to use a
Speaker 1: trash can, Like he definitely does not live in New York.
Speaker 2: There's there's no way, like.
Speaker 5: My favorite also relates to him not living in New York,
Speaker 5: which is when Kurb staked out his New York apartment
Speaker 5: and he came back once parked illegally and then caused
Speaker 5: a traffic jam by parking illegally so bad that he
Speaker 5: couldn't put out of the parking. He wasn't in a
Speaker 5: parking space. He was in someone's driveway. So then he
Speaker 5: proceeded to drive along the sidewalk, and they like filmed
Speaker 5: him doing this, and he confessed to doing it and
Speaker 5: was like it was a terrible mistake, just an incredible
Speaker 5: sequence of events.
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe that is like a New York mayor
Speaker 3: who can't drive, Like, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Like yet refuses to use mass transit.
Speaker 3: Oh God, that's true. That's true. He does hate public transportation.
Speaker 2: God, you can just send more cops in the subway.
Speaker 2: That'll fix it, all right, Oh God, let's uh yeah,
Speaker 2: let's let's let's get into this. Get start.
Speaker 1: So okay, So the things here is being indicted for
Speaker 1: are effectively okay. So he took a bunch of different
Speaker 1: bribes in different ways. So he took I guess there's
Speaker 1: two broad categories of bribes that he took, which is
Speaker 1: the bribes that are campaign donations that he funneled through
Speaker 1: straw donors, which is the thing where you like there's
Speaker 1: like limits on how much money you could donate to someone, right,
Speaker 1: So what you do is you find like ten people
Speaker 1: and you give them all two thousand dollars so they
Speaker 1: can still donate it even though it's the money from you.
Speaker 1: This is unbelievably legal. And the second type is him
Speaker 1: just accepting unbelievable amounts of like gifts and stuff from
Speaker 1: a Turk shairliner. Now, the interesting thing about this is
Speaker 1: that you would expect this is the thing that started
Speaker 1: when he was a mayor, but like, no, he was,
Speaker 1: so he was. He was the borough president of Brooklyn
Speaker 1: for a bunch of years before he became mayor.
Speaker 2: And this is like as.
Speaker 1: Burro president is when he really started doing all of
Speaker 1: this random, weird corruption stuff.
Speaker 2: He's been doing this for almost like ten years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I kind of love this too, because the like
Speaker 3: Brooklyn borough president, it's kind of a fake job, like
Speaker 3: you don't really do anything. And I love the fact
Speaker 3: that he still managed to find ways to be corrupt
Speaker 3: and his like fake.
Speaker 2: Job that he had.
Speaker 1: It's stunning, Oh, because I'm going to read starting with
Speaker 1: the indictment a bit. By smuggling their contributions to Adams
Speaker 1: through US based straw donors, Adams oversees contributors defeated federal
Speaker 1: laws that served to prevent foreign influence on US elections.
Speaker 2: Wealth.
Speaker 1: The individuals evaded laws designed to limit their power over
Speaker 1: elected officials by restricting the amount of money one person
Speaker 1: could donate to a candidate, and businesses circumvented New York
Speaker 1: City's ban on corporate contributions by fundeling the donations the
Speaker 1: multiple employees, frustrating a law that cc reduce corporate power
Speaker 1: in politics. Adams increases fundraising by accepting these concealed illegal
Speaker 1: donations at the cost of giving a secret patients undue
Speaker 1: influence over him that the law tries to prevent. So
Speaker 1: this is really funny because so there's three different illegal
Speaker 1: like things that he's done, like three shildo owners. So
Speaker 1: like there's like there's three kinds of campaign contributions you
Speaker 1: can't do. It's like corporations one person there's like limits
Speaker 1: and how men watch an individual person could donate and
Speaker 1: you can't get you can't get donations from like people
Speaker 1: not from the US, and he managed to both individually
Speaker 1: and in the same scheme violate every single one of
Speaker 1: these laws.
Speaker 2: It's it's shitty, widely incredible. I guess I would like
Speaker 2: to learn more.
Speaker 4: I mean, at some point, and I'm sure we'll get
Speaker 4: into it as how like explicit this whole like Turkish
Speaker 4: funding really is like extremely.
Speaker 2: About it. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get to this.
Speaker 5: It's when they're like, hey, Eric, you're not going to
Speaker 5: say anything about the Median genocide au that Tony didn't happen, bro,
Speaker 5: don't mention the genocide.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: So Eric Adams, the defendant, also saw and received other
Speaker 1: improper benefits from some of the same co conspirators who
Speaker 1: fundised shchra altonations to his campaign. In particular, a senior
Speaker 1: official in the Turkish diplomatic establishments henceforth Turkish official who
Speaker 1: facilitated many Chral donations to Adams, also arrange for Adams
Speaker 1: and his companions to receive free or discounted travel on
Speaker 1: Turkey's national airline quote the Turkish Airline, which is owned
Speaker 1: a significant part by the Turkish governments, to destinations including France, China,
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka, India, Hungary, and Turkey itself. The Turkish officials
Speaker 1: and other Turkish nationals further arrange for Adams and his
Speaker 1: companions to receive, among other things, free rooms at opulent hotels,
Speaker 1: free meals of high end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment
Speaker 1: well in Turkey.
Speaker 2: So this is all very very explicit.
Speaker 3: He's got wanderlust, you know, supposed to be like a
Speaker 3: travel blogger like Girley, like doing tiktoks and you know,
Speaker 3: unfortunately he had to become mayor.
Speaker 5: So yeah, a bond of log forster.
Speaker 3: Mayor starting to do the job he wants to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very tragic. Okay.
Speaker 1: So actually the first thing Turkish influence thing that he did.
Speaker 1: I actually, this is weirdly the one part of this
Speaker 1: they don't have a problem with. One of the big
Speaker 1: things he was trying to get was there's a giant
Speaker 1: like uke Turkish consulate building that they opened kind of recently,
Speaker 1: and a big part of this was getting permission to
Speaker 1: open the Turkish consulate without a fire inspection, so that
Speaker 1: air to one could visit for like the opening of
Speaker 1: the consulate and look, okay, we already can't fly to
Speaker 1: Turkey because of a public support for the Curtis Free movement.
Speaker 1: So like, I'm just gonna say this, I am entirely
Speaker 1: okay with this. I am I don't give a shit
Speaker 1: if they don't do fire inspections.
Speaker 4: I'm okay with heir to one being in a non
Speaker 4: fire safe building.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, like fuck him.
Speaker 1: Like, if the guy who burned hundred and fifty people
Speaker 1: alive and Cindy wants to fucking burn a death in
Speaker 1: his own consulate, then let him. Like I Jennie widely
Speaker 1: don't give a shit about this. She did threaten the
Speaker 1: job of like the New York Fire Department's fire inspector,
Speaker 1: which kind of sucks, but like, if everyone wants to
Speaker 1: burn to death in his death trap, let him do that.
Speaker 2: This is one of the.
Speaker 3: Text conversations that done. Was was uh, I don't know
Speaker 3: if leaked is the right word, but yeah, like cause
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: They were like there was something they said to where
Speaker 3: they were like, we've done a lot for you. Now
Speaker 3: it's time for you to do something for the Republic
Speaker 3: of Turkey. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get we'll get to that.
Speaker 1: This is yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so good town shit
Speaker 1: I was like, all right. After Eric Adams, a defendant,
Speaker 1: first travel to Turkey in twenty fifteen, the Turkish official
Speaker 1: introduced Adams to Turkish Airlines general manager in New York
Speaker 1: City area in twenty sixteen and twice in twenty seventeen. Again,
Speaker 1: this is all before he US Mayor Adam solicited and
Speaker 1: accepted free and heavily discounted luxury air travel from Turkish
Speaker 1: Airline as part of Turkish officials' efforts to gain an
Speaker 1: influence over Adams on three separate trips. Basically, like he's
Speaker 1: getting first class tickets from all of these people. It's
Speaker 1: so much money worth of stuff, like just like thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars. The exact totals, like all of the gifts
Speaker 1: he took from Turkish Airlines's like one hundred and it's
Speaker 1: like one hundred and thirty one thousand something dollars.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, So like any time I read a paragraph
Speaker 1: of this, just assume that in between like whatever paragraph
Speaker 1: I'm reading and the stuff I didn't read before it,
Speaker 1: he's taken another ten thousand dollars of free like first
Speaker 1: class rides a Turkish airline.
Speaker 5: It is a blessing in disguise, I will say that
Speaker 5: I will never see Eric Adams on a flight because
Speaker 5: I cannot fly.
Speaker 2: It was Turkish Airlines. That's true.
Speaker 1: There's a very funny line about this, because the Turkish
Speaker 1: airline provided free travel benefits were tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars to Eric Adams, the defendants. He flew the Turkish
Speaker 1: airline even when doing so was otherwise inconvenience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fucking correct.
Speaker 1: For example, for example, the July in August twenty seventeen trip,
Speaker 1: Adam's partner was surprised to learn that Adams was in
Speaker 1: Turkey when she had understood him to be flying from
Speaker 1: New York to France. Adams responded in a text message quote,
Speaker 1: transferring here you know first off is always in istanbul
Speaker 1: spelled very wrong and lowercase is true. When adams partner
Speaker 1: later inquired about planning a trip to the Eastern island Chile,
Speaker 1: Adams repeatedly asked her whether Turkish airlines could be used
Speaker 1: for these flights, requesting her to call Turkish Airlines to
Speaker 1: confirm they did not have roots between New York and Chile.
Speaker 2: Why would Tish airlines have a flight from New York?
Speaker 5: Oh my God, which spits part of the Greater Ottoman Empire.
Speaker 4: You know, I would take bribes from Air Canada, but
Speaker 4: I'm also not running for mayor.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well you could run for Bira president. That's true.
Speaker 2: That's true. I could. I could become.
Speaker 4: Elected the mayor of southful That is very doable. Every Similarly,
Speaker 4: lots of the mayors of South Fulton have had very
Speaker 4: odd kind of controversies. So what I'm saying is South
Speaker 4: Fulton is basically Georgia's version of New York.
Speaker 2: New York is a South Fulton of America. Yeah. Have
Speaker 2: you guys seen a video clip of him. Every city
Speaker 2: he goes to, he says, like, New York's the city
Speaker 2: of America. Yeah, crazy, It's crazy.
Speaker 3: Stambul of America.
Speaker 2: So this is all very funny. But this is all happening.
Speaker 1: All of the tens of thousands of dollars at this
Speaker 1: point of money that he's taking from Turkey is all
Speaker 1: happening at a period where Turkey is butchering Kurds across the
Speaker 1: Middle East, like his first trip there. And this is
Speaker 1: all again well before his mayor while he's like Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Borough president is four months before the fire bomber of
Speaker 1: that city that I talked about where they were again,
Speaker 1: they burned one hundred and fifty civilians alive in fucking building.
Speaker 1: If I'm remembering correctly, I'm pretty sure they killed. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure they burned the city council alive. That's just
Speaker 1: the stuff in Turkey, and like we have covered extensively
Speaker 1: on this show, Turkey's like drone warfare program. There's the
Speaker 1: whole thing of it. Has been long suspected that the
Speaker 1: Turkish government was aiding ISIS during the period because they
Speaker 1: were like using basically using them as a proxy to
Speaker 1: fight like Kurtish Freedom Movement forces in Syria.
Speaker 5: I think you could definitely say that, like former ISIS
Speaker 5: fighters are now fighting for the Turkish against the Kurds
Speaker 5: in the Iraqi Curtis done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've said that before.
Speaker 1: The Kurds will tell you that former I know David
Speaker 1: Graebery at the Apologies you spent actually who who smuggled
Speaker 1: a bunch of drone parts too, had a story about
Speaker 1: how we soccing people like yeah, they would like they
Speaker 1: would pick up ISIS fighters and they would look at
Speaker 1: their possessions and they every single one of them as
Speaker 1: Turkish passports. They all have like Turkish I did shit.
Speaker 1: It's like, hm, I wonder where these people came from.
Speaker 5: Even like I'll just say that I have spoken to
Speaker 5: some people who were part of the fight against ISIS
Speaker 5: who discovered the blank Turkish passports when taking like ISIS
Speaker 5: buildings and ISIS strongholds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's I mean, just this is a period
Speaker 1: of even by the standards of Turkey, like unbelievable Turkish violence.
Speaker 2: This is their their invasion of Syria.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is the period in which Eric
Speaker 1: Adams decides that he's going to become a nation to
Speaker 1: the Turkish state. And so obviously, like he lies about
Speaker 1: this to the governments because again you're not allowed to
Speaker 1: do this. There's a bunch of very funny schemes that
Speaker 1: he does. As Brooklyn Borough President, Adams employed a scheduler
Speaker 1: henceforth known as the Adams Scheduler, who pointed it who
Speaker 1: manages appointments, meetings, and other official events. Despite her status
Speaker 1: as a New York City employee, the Adams Scheduler was
Speaker 1: used by Adams to perform personal tasks for him, such
Speaker 1: as collecting rent at a Brooklyn property he owned. Adams
Speaker 1: also assigned the scheduler to pay various expenses for him,
Speaker 1: after which Adams would reimburse the scheduler in cash. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Adams sent a series of emails to the
Speaker 1: scheduler directing the scheduler to pay for the free twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen flights he and his companions had already taken on
Speaker 1: the Turkish air Line, but the emails provided inconsistent explanations.
Speaker 1: In some Adams suggested that the Adams schedulers should pay
Speaker 1: using Adam's credit card, while on others, Adams claimed to
Speaker 1: have left cash in an envelope for the Adams scheduler
Speaker 1: to send to the Turkish air Line.
Speaker 2: Ah, it's that's how you pay. That's how I pay
Speaker 2: for all my fights. Cash. It an envido.
Speaker 1: This is how we tried to cover up for the
Speaker 1: fact that he's not paying for these flights. And he'll
Speaker 1: pay like six hundred dollars for a thread dollars ticket,
Speaker 1: but he's like sending envelopes to his scheduler to hand
Speaker 1: to the Turkish air Line.
Speaker 5: A man who was a call doing an absolutely terrible
Speaker 5: job of covering his own ass.
Speaker 1: You know who else is taking bribes from the Turkish government.
Speaker 1: We cannot It's not our products and services. It's it's
Speaker 1: someone else's products and services. Ours are all fine. We
Speaker 1: are back. So there's actually another paragraph of that part.
Speaker 1: For example, on November twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, Adam sent
Speaker 1: an email to the scheduler saying that with respects to
Speaker 1: the July trip quote, I left you the money for
Speaker 1: the International airline and did an envelope and your top
Speaker 1: gest drawer please send it to them. So the funny
Speaker 1: one about this, right, So he's supposed to have this
Speaker 1: like cash dead drop to pay for the island tickets.
Speaker 1: Then he just like never does it because the tickets
Speaker 1: are free. So he just like stops covering his tracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing, and doesn't use signal.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's really sounding okay. So what is Turkish government
Speaker 1: getting from this in return for travel benefits the Turkish
Speaker 1: official provided or range In about twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Eric Adams, the defendant, granted a political request from the
Speaker 1: Turkish official prior to Adam's twenty fifteen travel to Turkey,
Speaker 1: which Adams knew and disclosed to the one of the
Speaker 1: monitoring agencies have been funded by, among other entities, the
Speaker 1: Turkish Consulate, the Turkish Airline in three separate municipalities in Turkey.
Speaker 1: Adams maintained a relationship with a Turkish community center in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: In or about twenty sixteen, the Turkish official told Adams
Speaker 1: that the community center was affiliated with a Turkish movement
Speaker 1: that was hostile to Turkey's government, and that if Adams
Speaker 1: wished to continue receiving support from the Turkish government, Adams
Speaker 1: could no longer associate with the community center. Adam zach
Speaker 1: wies Scott, I wonder who it was, See, Okay, so
Speaker 1: I looked into this. No one that I've seen doing
Speaker 1: reporting on this seems to know which center this was.
Speaker 1: But but this has to be a Goulinist thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to people who didn't spend all of their childhoodmired
Speaker 1: in the intpt of Turkish politics, Airedwan's the current rule
Speaker 1: of Turkey, Gulam was like one of his old old allies.
Speaker 1: But they had this giant falling out and a huge
Speaker 1: part of what everyone was doing in the twenty tens
Speaker 1: was like trying to purge all of the Gulanists from everywhere.
Speaker 1: Like there was this whole scheme running I think through
Speaker 1: Michael Flynn, where Turkey was trying to get Trump to
Speaker 1: like the Gulan's like in like a compound and I
Speaker 1: think Virginia or something, and Turkey was trying to get
Speaker 1: Trump to like raid the compound and send them to Turkey,
Speaker 1: which didn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that line's up with the coup. They are twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen coup, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, it's always been unclear to me
Speaker 1: exactly how much influence these people have. But the one
Speaker 1: thing I will say is that so I had a
Speaker 1: classmate in college who was in Turkey for a long time,
Speaker 1: and their line about it was like, yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like how much of this sort of Gulist deep state
Speaker 1: shit is true. But also there were like gulanest people
Speaker 1: who you could go to who had like all the
Speaker 1: answers to like state exams if you want to be
Speaker 1: willing to get in bed, whether they would just give
Speaker 1: him all the answers, So, like, you know, they weren't
Speaker 1: not a part of this, And I'm pretty sure what
Speaker 1: happened here was that Adams was like cutting off all
Speaker 1: contact with these people because this this is part of
Speaker 1: the goolan Ist split, I'm not one hundred percent sure
Speaker 1: because there are multiple community centers in Brooklyn, in Brooklyn
Speaker 1: like Turchimuni centers in Brooklyn, but I'm about eighty percent
Speaker 1: sure that's what happens. So that's like one of the
Speaker 1: first direct influence things. Okay, so he's doing the influence
Speaker 1: peddling stuff, right, He's doing his partially through the airlines.
Speaker 1: And then also he's just taking a bunch of legal
Speaker 1: fundraising money.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: On July twenty second, twenty eighteen, the same day as
Speaker 1: this fundraising event, the Adam staffer and the promoter discussed
Speaker 1: by text message a possible trip by Adams the Turkey.
Speaker 1: The promoter stated, in part, fundraising Turkey is not legal,
Speaker 1: but I think I can raise money for your campaign
Speaker 1: off the record. The Adam stafford inquired, how will Adams
Speaker 1: declare that money? The promoter responded, he won't declare it
Speaker 1: or will make the donation. Do an American citizen in
Speaker 1: the US a Turk, I'll give cash to him in Turkey.
Speaker 1: We'll I'll send it to an American. He will make
Speaker 1: the donation to you. The Adam staffer replied, I think
Speaker 1: he won't get involved in such games. They might cause
Speaker 1: a stink later on, but I'll ask anyways. The Adam
Speaker 1: Stafford then asked how much do you think would come
Speaker 1: from you? The promoter responded max one hundred k. The
Speaker 1: Adam Stafferd wrote, one hundred k. Do you have a
Speaker 1: chance to transfer that here? We can't do it while
Speaker 1: Eric is in Turkey, to which your promoter replied, let's think.
Speaker 1: After the conversation, the Adam Stafferd asked Adams whether that
Speaker 1: Adam Stafford should pursue the unlawful for contributions offered by
Speaker 1: the promoter, and, contrary to the staffers expectations, Adams directed
Speaker 1: the staffer to pursue the promoter's illegal skime.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: I feel like you should know who you're working for
Speaker 1: well enough to be like, hey, this guy is offering
Speaker 1: a completely illegal fundraising scheme that we know is illegal,
Speaker 1: and I don't think my boss will take it.
Speaker 2: And then the boss turns around to me, he's.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, fuck it, raised buddy, it might cause a
Speaker 4: big stink later on.
Speaker 2: You don't say, yeah, that's wild. To be fair, it did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so explicit, and I do want to get
Speaker 4: to some some of the other text messages sooner or later,
Speaker 4: because it really just shows how like aware everyone involved
Speaker 4: is of over like what's going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing crimes.
Speaker 3: It's literally just hey, what should I do with the
Speaker 3: crime money?
Speaker 2: The illegal crime?
Speaker 3: Have we mentioned the legal.
Speaker 1: So partially this is being run through Turkish airlines, Partially
Speaker 1: this is being run through a Turkish university, and partially
Speaker 1: this is being run through just a bunch of businessmen,
Speaker 1: some of whom are Turkish, some of them aren't. So
Speaker 1: here's like the next thing I was gonna read. Although
Speaker 1: Adams knew that Businessman one was a Turkish national who
Speaker 1: could not lawfully contribute to US elections, Adams directed the
Speaker 1: staffer to obtain the illegal contributions offered by Businessman one.
Speaker 1: Following up on this directive, Adams wrote to the staffer
Speaker 1: that business or one quote is ready to help. I
Speaker 1: don't want his help to be wasted. So they are
Speaker 1: just like unbelievably directly being like, yeah, we know this
Speaker 1: guy can't do this, but we're just going to tell
Speaker 1: him to send this money anyways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's insane how slapstick they are about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you know, they're kind of trying to
Speaker 1: come from the tracks. I think this part of it
Speaker 1: is one of the things that I think like was
Speaker 1: one of the things that kind of went viral over this.
Speaker 1: So Adams is trying to arrange another like fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars contribution from a third Turkish businessman, and in the
Speaker 1: middle of this, he's saying to the staffer, quote to
Speaker 1: be on the safe side, please delete capital P, capital D.
Speaker 1: Please delete all messages you send me, Adams responded, always do.
Speaker 1: Now we don't for a fact that a bunch of
Speaker 1: these messages we're simply not deleted, considering.
Speaker 2: That you just read them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I do also think it was worth noting that some
Speaker 4: of these efforts certainly started to ramp up around his
Speaker 4: mayoral campaign, because some of these Turkish officials thought that
Speaker 4: if Adams becomes a more like prominent member in politics,
Speaker 4: he ever like runs for president, if they can gain
Speaker 4: influence over him from like pretty early on, that would
Speaker 4: be really useful for the Turkish government. That is some
Speaker 4: of like the reasoning behind this like decades long campaign
Speaker 4: like puppet Eric Adams.
Speaker 5: Maybe the Turkish government had seen Nate Silver's now infamous tweet.
Speaker 4: It will be the next Yeah, I mean it's all
Speaker 4: nights any such case, any case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, snate silver who got them to chase us around
Speaker 2: with drones last last October.
Speaker 4: He keeps getting more businessman to donate tens of thousands
Speaker 4: of dollars.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 4: It's like repeatedly, he just keeps getting more and more
Speaker 4: and more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the funniest part is that like by like guy
Speaker 1: number four, he's doing this with he's like telling the
Speaker 1: guy how to do straw donations where he's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you can't donate ten thousand dollars, but give two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to.
Speaker 2: Each of your employees and they'll do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. He's doing like instructions for each of these guys,
Speaker 4: and it's like at a certain point, like some of
Speaker 4: the early airline stuff is yes, illegal and sketchy, but
Speaker 4: like you know, it's it's just getting some nice plane tickets.
Speaker 4: By like twenty twenty one, he's just teaching them how
Speaker 4: to do like super illegal like campaign fraud.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've like committed so much, like you're just like
Speaker 4: into deep, like you can't like.
Speaker 2: What's there to do? Yeah, you know who else is
Speaker 2: in too deep?
Speaker 1: It's the products and services who control the podcasts podcast
Speaker 1: support that one. Yeah wow, wows not so much to
Speaker 1: say by the Reagan coin people.
Speaker 2: They have a very little editorial control.
Speaker 3: Are supposed to delete those tags.
Speaker 2: There are so many funny ones. He also he also
Speaker 2: is taking.
Speaker 1: Money from this Lusbek construction guy where he takes a
Speaker 1: bunch of money that like shows up at this like
Speaker 1: New York like husbig Pride event to give a speech
Speaker 1: because he took money from this like contruction guy.
Speaker 2: Did he say new York? Is he Itzbekistan of America? Honestly,
Speaker 2: he probably has.
Speaker 1: That's like, yeah, he's probably said Kazakstan by accident because
Speaker 1: he always says the wrong question giving his speech like that.
Speaker 3: My favorite moment was the video of him speaking to
Speaker 3: like the Indian group that he kept saying.
Speaker 5: Pakistani, Oh god, yeah yeah, oh dear yeah.
Speaker 2: I think that went down like a chocolate tipa. He
Speaker 2: did it like twice too. They corrected him that he kept.
Speaker 3: Doing it well, they were like gelling over him, and
Speaker 3: he said stout God.
Speaker 1: So there's another kind of funny one where he's he's
Speaker 1: getting a bunch of money from this university and he
Speaker 1: actually returns the money because his campaign is like his
Speaker 1: mayor campaign is over, but he's still going to go
Speaker 1: to prison for it because he lied to the government
Speaker 1: at where he got the money though he gave it away. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I want to start reading some of these texts
Speaker 1: so we can get into like how explicit the stuff is.
Speaker 1: On July twenty second, twenty twenty one, Adams, through the staffer,
Speaker 1: requested that the airline manager book flights to Istabul for
Speaker 1: Adams in order to conceal the favorable treatment. The Adam
Speaker 1: staffer requested the airline manager charge Adams what would appear
Speaker 1: to be a real price, Adam Stafford, how much does
Speaker 1: he owe? Please let them make a call and that
Speaker 1: will make the payments. Airline manage. It is very expensive
Speaker 1: because it was last minute. I am working on a discount,
Speaker 1: Adam Stafford. Okay, thank you, airline manager. I am going
Speaker 1: to charge fifty dollars, Adam Stafford. No, airline manager. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't work, wouldn't it, Adam Stafford, No, dear, fifty dollars?
Speaker 1: What quote a proper price? How much should I charge?
Speaker 1: A smiley face emoji, Adam Stafford. His every step is
Speaker 1: being watched right now a thousand dollars or so let
Speaker 1: it be somewhat real. We don't want them to say
Speaker 1: that he is flying for free. At the moment, the
Speaker 1: media's attention is on Eric.
Speaker 3: Amazing stuff, the smiley pairs of the tax is Briller
Speaker 3: throwing off.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 4: So he paid about like one one hundred dollars for
Speaker 4: these round trip tickets and he was upgraded to business classes.
Speaker 4: Suck at him, and in actuality these tickets would would
Speaker 4: again be like fifteen thousand dollars. And this is like
Speaker 4: the same type of stuff he was doing like eight
Speaker 4: years ago, except this time he actually is paying some money,
Speaker 4: whereas last time he did not actually fill up those
Speaker 4: envelopes with cash. Yeah, but still he's about he's about
Speaker 4: fourteen thousand short.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He also this a great one where like the staffers like,
Speaker 1: do you have recommendations on where he can go to Turkey?
Speaker 1: The airline manager, four season staffer, it's too expensive, airline manager,
Speaker 1: why does he care? He's not going to fake his name,
Speaker 1: will not be at anything either. Adam Stafford super super fun.
Speaker 2: It's so super illegal.
Speaker 3: I want to meet the person who's sending these texts yeah,
Speaker 3: so bad.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: Why is this like the cadence with which they're speaking
Speaker 3: in these texts, It's just insane.
Speaker 2: It's incredible stuff. There's some great ones. I gotta read
Speaker 2: this one.
Speaker 1: On the day the Adams fundraiser was scheduled to depart Istanbul,
Speaker 1: Adams created a message thread between himself, the Adams Fundraiser,
Speaker 1: and the airline manager, quote, he will try to help
Speaker 1: with the issue with the form he can see about
Speaker 1: a hotel or business class lounge. The manager then arranged
Speaker 1: for the Adams fundraiser, who was otherwise on an economy ticket,
Speaker 1: to have access to not only the Turkish Airlines business lounge,
Speaker 1: but also an exclusive private suite inside the lounge, complete
Speaker 1: with a bed and free food. The Turkish airline manager explained,
Speaker 1: this is our suite for VIPs and we want you
Speaker 1: to feel yourself. Two words yourself sick VIP, smiley face emoji.
Speaker 2: Fail yourself VIP. That's what we will want.
Speaker 1: At another point in the exchange, Adams wrote, quote thanks
Speaker 1: a million airline manager my brother. Which airline managers wanted anytime?
Speaker 2: Brother? Oh yes, I feel physically unwell. They just keep
Speaker 2: doing this. On the day he won the election.
Speaker 1: Like the day after, the airline manager sent the following
Speaker 1: text message, brother, congratulations, Adams responded, cannot thank you enough.
Speaker 2: So true, so true.
Speaker 4: That is good, although it's not as good as kind
Speaker 4: of the next thing when in December twenty one he
Speaker 4: was putting together his like mayoral like team for like
Speaker 4: policy advisors and his transition team, and he did not
Speaker 4: have like people from Turkey on on this list. So
Speaker 4: this air manager said, didn't. It's it's not quite blackmail,
Speaker 4: but it is certainly like bribery, saying like, hey, maybe
Speaker 4: you should put me on like your senior on your
Speaker 4: senior advisory team, and if you don't, then you're not
Speaker 4: going to get free tickets anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to read the exact line because it's so
Speaker 1: funny the staffer sense of the airline manager list and
Speaker 1: the airlin manager response it would suit me well to
Speaker 1: be lead or senior advisor. Two days later, the airline
Speaker 1: manager sent a message reiterating lead please plz please smiley
Speaker 1: face otherwise fifty two is empty on the way back.
Speaker 2: Seat.
Speaker 4: Oh good, oh my god, Lead pease you don't make
Speaker 4: me a lead adviser. We're not going to give you
Speaker 4: free free airplane tickets are.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's so funny. Winky face.
Speaker 4: And then I believe he did add someone onto his team.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yeah, he was added to the Infrastructure, Climate
Speaker 1: and Sustainability Committee Transition team Jesus Christ, which the whole
Speaker 1: Sustainability Commission is just like a slush. There's another thing
Speaker 1: later where like he's like a secret meeting of like
Speaker 1: these Turkish donors and he calls it like a sustainability
Speaker 1: transition meeting, so no one will know that he's having
Speaker 1: this meeting.
Speaker 4: I mean you should read what the airline manager wrote
Speaker 4: after he was added to the Climate and Sustainability and
Speaker 4: Infrastructure Committee.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, on December twenty twenty one, the senior Turkish government
Speaker 1: official sent the airline manager a series of texts noting
Speaker 1: the airline manager's membership on Adam's Infrastructure Climate Sustainability Committe
Speaker 1: and sending.
Speaker 2: Applause about you.
Speaker 1: No, the airlineer fonded that his membership on the tradition
Speaker 1: Committee was in service of Turkey. Quote, thank you brother.
Speaker 1: We are doing our best to server country adequately. Your
Speaker 1: support gives us strength here. Thank you you were always
Speaker 1: there for us we're trying to be loyal.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Oh wait is it?
Speaker 3: We're trying to be worthy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're trying to be worthy. Yeah, we're trying to
Speaker 2: be worthy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That is so sorry. I'm trying to be worthy of you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for being there. Please be so good.
Speaker 3: I just like want to be worthy of you. Ericata.
Speaker 1: So by this point, I total that the Turkish airline bribes,
Speaker 1: specifically that all the benefits total one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Seats just a general life, which is also just a
Speaker 4: small fraction of like the total amount of money he received.
Speaker 2: To be fat. That's probably like the face prices of
Speaker 2: business class tickets and lounge access, which no one actually
Speaker 2: pays for.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, because like beyond the actual airline stuff, because
Speaker 4: of like the campaign like match like a policy deals,
Speaker 4: like he received in the end, like like ten million
Speaker 4: dollars right from from like all of this whole ordeal.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so so the match funding thing basically is like
Speaker 1: there's public matching funds for like private donations for for
Speaker 1: mayoral candidates. There's like some things you have to go through,
Speaker 1: but in order to get that money, right, you have
Speaker 1: to abide by campaign finance law and all of the
Speaker 1: So all of these like straw donor bribe donations that
Speaker 1: he's getting are being are also I think it's like
Speaker 1: eight to one or something like matching funds are being
Speaker 1: matched by the government. Say you got like ten million
Speaker 1: dollars matching funds.
Speaker 4: He's not only like doing like campaign fraud by getting
Speaker 4: this like foreign influence amount of money. He's also just
Speaker 4: like stealing from from everyone else too by having all
Speaker 4: of these illegal contributions matched. Yeah, so in the end,
Speaker 4: I think he's like he's like charged with like like
Speaker 4: basically ten million dollars of like fraud.
Speaker 1: The other thing is like, like this is this is how
Speaker 1: he won the election, Like he won the election by
Speaker 1: spending an unbelievable amount of money and like that money.
Speaker 1: Who's like this like stuff that he defrauded the government for.
Speaker 5: And it's ironic that like the campaign funding matching is
Speaker 5: designed to like amplify the donations made by regular New
Speaker 5: Yorkers and not make it all.
Speaker 2: Like a super Pac game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Eric Adams thought he they made an end run around.
Speaker 4: That, and like I did not realize just because I
Speaker 4: had been keeping up with like Eric Adams news previous
Speaker 4: to this, I did not realize how often his house
Speaker 4: was getting rated by the FBI.
Speaker 1: There were so many, there's been so many, Like this
Speaker 1: is all just one angle on the like thirty five three,
Speaker 1: because there's there's so much other corruption he was doing,
Speaker 1: Like this is just the stuff they gone specifically around
Speaker 1: him for. But like basically everyone in the circle around
Speaker 1: him is like also going to prison. Like to the
Speaker 1: point where remember I was talking about the Uzbek construction
Speaker 1: guy that he donated money to. Yeah, that guy also
Speaker 1: paid off like the guy who's going to become mayor
Speaker 1: when Adams gets arrested, So like the depity mayor like also.
Speaker 2: Took money for that guy. Amazing. Yeah, so one of
Speaker 2: the worst parts of this twenty first two, the Turkish
Speaker 2: official messaged the Adam stafford noting that our Median Genocide
Speaker 2: Remembrance Day was approaching and repeatedly asking the Adam stafford
Speaker 2: for assurances that Adams would not make any statements about
Speaker 2: their Armedian genocide. Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: The Adam stafford confirmed that Adams did not make a
Speaker 1: statement about about the Armenian genocide.
Speaker 2: Adams did not make such a statement. New York, not
Speaker 2: the Yerevan of America.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she just straight up took money from the Turkish
Speaker 1: government genocide denial for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah so that's great. That that's incredible stuff to be fair.
Speaker 4: That is that is the mainstay of current American politics.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah yeah, and it's the best fundate of all
Speaker 5: genocide denials.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, Well this erg Adam's guy doesn't seem like
Speaker 4: a doesn't seem too good. It is just fascinating to
Speaker 4: me that out of all the cities, New York is
Speaker 4: just the one city that you cannot have a normal mayor. Yeah,
Speaker 4: just like every single mayor is is weird and fucked
Speaker 4: up in like a different way.
Speaker 2: Like it's just impossible. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There was like an onion onion headline on Time that was, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like the mayor de Blasio like, well, well well
Speaker 3: it's it's not so easy to have a not fucked
Speaker 3: up mayor or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the exact line was, well, well, not
Speaker 1: so easy to find a mayor doesn't suck ship down.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 4: The Erroganta was one hits so much harder because he's
Speaker 4: like the law and order mayor, Like he's like you know,
Speaker 4: like like former cop, blah blah blah. He's he's the
Speaker 4: one making New York worse through all of like the
Speaker 4: fucked up police stuff. Meanwhile, he's just been doing like
Speaker 4: major crimes and having his house rated by the FBI
Speaker 4: like every other month, also having like his friend's house
Speaker 4: is rated by the FBI. Having was it like a
Speaker 4: police chief or a police commissioner who was just rated.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then the interim police commissioner they put in
Speaker 5: often the first world.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's wild stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got to talk about his phone password before
Speaker 2: we finish. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the why I want to close on is like
Speaker 1: before he goes under, like all of his staffers are
Speaker 1: getting visited by the FBI, and hey, you could tell
Speaker 1: all cops and are dumb ast shit because they all
Speaker 1: they all agreed to talk to the FBI and like
Speaker 1: lied to this, and then we're trying to like coordinate
Speaker 1: destroying the messages which the FBI got all the data from.
Speaker 1: On October sixth, twenty twenty three, FBI agents executed a
Speaker 1: search warrant for the electronic devices used by Eric Adams,
Speaker 1: a defendants. So Adams was carrying several electronic devices, including
Speaker 1: two cell phones, he was not carrying his personal cell phone,
Speaker 1: which is a device he used to communicate about the
Speaker 1: conduct described in this indictment. When Adams produced his personal
Speaker 1: cell phone the next day in response to a subpoena,
Speaker 1: it was locked, such as the device required a password
Speaker 1: to open. Adams claimed that after he learned the investigation
Speaker 1: into his contact he learned about the investigation, he changed
Speaker 1: the passwords the day before and increased the complexity of
Speaker 1: his password from four to six digits. Adams had done this,
Speaker 1: he claimed to prevent members of his staff from inrittently
Speaker 1: or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone. According to Adams,
Speaker 1: he wished to preserve the context of its phone due
Speaker 1: to the investigation. But Adams further claimed he'd forgotten the password.
Speaker 1: He just said, was unable to provide the NBA with
Speaker 1: the password that can unlock.
Speaker 2: The phone if they tried his birthday.
Speaker 4: It's the funniest argument. Yeah yeah, they like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I changed. I changed the password so that the information
Speaker 4: was safe and wouldn't be deleted. Also, I forgot the password.
Speaker 1: Okay, so like presumably this is encrypted, right, but like
Speaker 1: I cannot, Like, what the fuck is the FBI doing that.
Speaker 1: They can't just break into this phone, like, I mean,
Speaker 1: some phones are hard to break into, like it it is,
Speaker 1: it is true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, have struggled with iPhones for what Yes, but this
Speaker 5: is but this is Eric Adams. Yeah yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 5: it might be zero zero zero zero, like they ought
Speaker 5: to give it the elk on.
Speaker 2: It's dry to be honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like they've got to have some fucking like spook
Speaker 1: from the NSA that they can illegally send his phone
Speaker 1: over to.
Speaker 4: Like I'm sure they've tried Celebright. I'm sure they've tried
Speaker 4: a whole bunch of stuff. It just doesn't always work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I don't know, it makes you feel wildly
Speaker 1: better about phone security. Oh the way, this is a
Speaker 1: message about this public safety announcement. If you use a
Speaker 1: face print or a fingerprint to lock your phone, the
Speaker 1: cops can just use your face or your fingerprint to
Speaker 1: a block it, or they can get it with a warrant.
Speaker 1: But if it's like an actual number, like they can't
Speaker 1: put a gun to your head and say open it,
Speaker 1: which is the way that this would normally sort of work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, basic security thing. So in all, Adams is
Speaker 1: being charged with simultaneously conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal
Speaker 1: program bribery, and to receive camphree and contributions by foreign national.
Speaker 2: There's a kind of wire fraud.
Speaker 1: There's another count of solicitation of a contribution by foreign national.
Speaker 1: There's subsequently, the fourth count is the same as a
Speaker 1: third count. It's it's solicitation of a contribution by four
Speaker 1: national and the fifth count is bribery. So he's like
Speaker 1: probably going down, going down.
Speaker 2: He sounds pretty fucked.
Speaker 4: I mean, it has been interesting how much the federal
Speaker 4: government has been her cracking down on foreign influence before
Speaker 4: the selection, both with like tenant media, like a Russian
Speaker 4: foreign influence stuff like this. There's been like some of
Speaker 4: like Jimmy Dore or like orbiters that have I know,
Speaker 4: have have been getting looked into by the FEDS for
Speaker 4: like Russian foreign influence.
Speaker 2: Dude.
Speaker 4: And this is not a show where we regularly praise
Speaker 4: the actions of the fedral government. But it's always funny
Speaker 4: to see my enemies having a hard time. And I'm pray,
Speaker 4: I'm praying for that. Jackson Hinkle one which is yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: because it's so it's so obvious, You're so obvious that
Speaker 4: he's he's absolutely getting paid by some by some forty government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder which one this one is air to
Speaker 1: one versus the FBI, which I'm just like just chomping
Speaker 1: down popcorn and clapping like a seal watching rifles.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, destroy each other no matter what happens. I'm
Speaker 4: okay with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 5: I will repeat my position here at the end of
Speaker 5: the show that I am prepared to vote for Joe
Speaker 5: Biden on the condition that he immediately begins trading Eric
Speaker 5: Adams for Abdul Julan, who does not belong to jail
Speaker 5: Unlike Eric Adams. It'sohulan week this week, and so yeah,
Speaker 5: he shouldn't be in prison.
Speaker 2: Let him out. How do you feel about your mayor, Joey?
Speaker 3: You know, it sounds like he's he's working on some ship.
Speaker 3: He's got to figure out if he really wants you know.
Speaker 3: I see. This is the thing too, is it's like,
Speaker 3: do I want to be like, Wow, congrats to the
Speaker 3: FBI on this investigation. No. That being said, it is
Speaker 3: really funny to see this all go down. I think
Speaker 3: also just the amount of bullshit that he has done
Speaker 3: while he's in office. But both legally and over the
Speaker 3: table and under the table, and it's kind of funny
Speaker 3: to see like this meet the thing that takes him
Speaker 3: down yet other one of my favorite tweets about all
Speaker 3: this with somebody who was like, I'm sure Eric Adams
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it's going to be uh really
Speaker 3: pro a prison reform all of a sudden, but I
Speaker 3: I hope so, you know, that would be a crazy It's.
Speaker 2: Like an abolitionist.
Speaker 3: I'm getting flashbacks person abolition arts. I'm getting flashbacks when
Speaker 3: a when a oh god, that's the same to Blasio.
Speaker 3: Uh the governor, the governor, Oh my god, former governor,
Speaker 3: like what he was having all of this shit come
Speaker 3: out and like the last thing he did in office
Speaker 3: was the legalized weed, and it was like such a
Speaker 3: like last ditch, Like fine, here, you guys go like
Speaker 3: like are we going to get something like that? Are
Speaker 3: we gonna get? Well? I guess he tried with the
Speaker 3: trash cans and people rejected that. But it's been an experience.
Speaker 3: I hope for the sake of the city that uh,
Speaker 3: you know, he faces consequences for this and it's never
Speaker 3: back in New York politics. But I guess we'll see
Speaker 3: what happens.
Speaker 4: No, I'm not going to cheer on the FBI, but
Speaker 4: but I am pro cop on cop of violence.
Speaker 2: That's true, and that's true, and that's all this is.
Speaker 2: That's that's all this is. So that's fine.
Speaker 3: I'm pro irony. I'm pro like like you're getting got
Speaker 3: by the same like people you're bros.
Speaker 4: I am interested in what the next New York mayoral
Speaker 4: election will look like.
Speaker 3: We're bringing in Laurie Lightfoot, let's go on hat.
Speaker 4: And the small possibility that, depending on how this next
Speaker 4: election goes, we could have a Trump versus Clinton mayoral
Speaker 4: race in New York. I would love to watch.
Speaker 5: Maybe Hillary Clinton will finally make her film about the
Speaker 5: Syrian democratic forces she's been promising to make for years.
Speaker 1: I want to close on a kind of slightly more
Speaker 1: serious struggles are connected note, because the thing about Eric
Speaker 1: Adams is that he was the guy who was brought
Speaker 1: in black cop like very specifically brought in and his
Speaker 1: thing was basically to contain the twenty twenty uprising, right.
Speaker 1: He was a guy whose thing was we're bringing in
Speaker 1: the kind of revolution, We're stomping all of this stuff out,
Speaker 1: like all of the sort of like gains of anti
Speaker 1: police stuff that you'd made, all of the sort of
Speaker 1: ideological games been made. We're going to wipe all that out.
Speaker 1: And I think it is really significant that the government
Speaker 1: who is funding him is a Turkish government because if
Speaker 1: you look at the last cycle, right when so Eric
Speaker 1: Adams is starting to do this in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: what's what's happening in Turkey in that time is that
Speaker 1: Turkey have been one of the big sites of huge uprisings.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen they have one of the biggest, like
Speaker 1: of that cycle of protests. So twenty thirteen is the
Speaker 1: second of the of the waves from like the Occupy
Speaker 1: twenty eleven waves, Right, there's a big wave in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: and then twenty thirteen to second one, one of the
Speaker 1: biggest one is in Turkey. And Turkey's eventual solution to
Speaker 1: this is basically just the wholesale slaughter of the Curtish
Speaker 1: revolution that was happening. And you know, literally in twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen at the same time twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, at
Speaker 1: the same time as the Michael Brown uprising is going on,
Speaker 1: and then Baltimore goes up right at the same time
Speaker 1: that's happening. There's like these are just Kurdish uprisings in Turkey,
Speaker 1: That's where all the fire bombing happens, right, These these
Speaker 1: these things are very, very intimately connected. There's a reason
Speaker 1: why other than just sort of cartriganous corruption stuff that
Speaker 1: these that these forces are aligned with each other because
Speaker 1: the same people behind the American prison state are also
Speaker 1: the same people who are fucking backing this Turkish extermination
Speaker 1: as we've been against the Kurds, and we're going to
Speaker 1: either win our freedom together or we're going to have
Speaker 1: a thousand more fucking grek.
Speaker 3: Adams is exactly yeah. And I mean I think, like
Speaker 3: going back to what I was saying before, like the
Speaker 3: craziest thing about all this and like this is definitely
Speaker 3: something that I've kind of had to like step back
Speaker 3: and be like, all right, Like I obviously am existing
Speaker 3: within like a specific community, Like New York is a
Speaker 3: huge city. It's the lowerest city in the US, and
Speaker 3: there's lots of different smaller communities, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I feel like everybody that I know and everybody I
Speaker 3: interact with hates Eric Adams has like their own list
Speaker 3: of reasons why like he has done X Y Z
Speaker 3: thing and they're like whether it's like my friends that
Speaker 3: are teachers or like work for or just use public
Speaker 3: libraries that he has like really decided to attack and
Speaker 3: like defund for various reasons, or like friends that have
Speaker 3: had to deal with like the prison system or whatever.
Speaker 3: Or last year, I'd been working on an investigative show
Speaker 3: that was looking into a lot of the the situation
Speaker 3: at Rikers, and you know, Rikers is supposed to be
Speaker 3: closed in twenty twenty seven at a RK. Adams has
Speaker 3: really tried to push back against that, despite the fact
Speaker 3: that it's like there's a federal invested investigation into the
Speaker 3: situation there and it's not like the conditions are not good.
Speaker 3: It is an unpopular solution, you know, like most New
Speaker 3: Yorkers agree that there needs to be some other alternative
Speaker 3: than Rikers and just sending people to like literally an island.
Speaker 3: That being said, like he won the election. He won
Speaker 3: his mayoral election it which sort of like surprising. He
Speaker 3: was kind of the underdog. There were other candidates that
Speaker 3: I think people had kind of been expecting to win,
Speaker 3: and yeah, he was the law and order guy. He
Speaker 3: was coming in is supposed to be this like alternative
Speaker 3: to like the twenty twenty uprising to what was seen
Speaker 3: as this like chaos, And again, yeah, it's the irony
Speaker 3: of him getting got by its own system, getting got
Speaker 3: by the fact that like he just keeps doing crimes.
Speaker 3: He loves doing crimes, his favorite thing. And then at
Speaker 3: the same time, it's like he's caused all this damage
Speaker 3: to like individual like specific programs in the city, specific
Speaker 3: systems that were really helping people. He has spread like
Speaker 3: misinformation about migrants that have been in New York. He
Speaker 3: has been like there's just a laundry list of things
Speaker 3: that he has done that has been like insanely harmful
Speaker 3: for like various reasons. And you know what, if this
Speaker 3: is going to be the thing that's going to go
Speaker 3: down at the end of the day, this is Sabrina
Speaker 3: Carpenter apparently that also those of you who don't know,
Speaker 3: the Sabrina Carpenter Feather music video apparently was a big
Speaker 3: part of the Eric Adams indictment from kind of the
Speaker 3: more local side involving the church that she was filming
Speaker 3: at and the I'm not sure what his official position is,
Speaker 3: but like the priest who had kind of allowed her
Speaker 3: to come in and film, and then it ended up
Speaker 3: that he was demoted because if you've listened to a
Speaker 3: Sabrina Carpenter song, you can see why the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: might not be super excited about that.
Speaker 2: And then he.
Speaker 3: Decided to cooperate with the investigation since the church wasn't
Speaker 3: super happy with him. This whole thing is just there's something.
Speaker 3: It's like, there's so many aspects of this that are
Speaker 3: so crazy. If this is gonna be gonna get them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So someone's gonna do like a thirty part podcast
Speaker 1: series about this something I'm gonna listen to every single
Speaker 1: and there's.
Speaker 3: Gonna be so much more stuff that's gonna come out.
Speaker 2: That's yeah.
Speaker 4: Speaking of podcasts, Joey, do you want to plug your
Speaker 4: work for sure?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I'm right now producing a show called but We Loved,
Speaker 3: which is on Iheart's Network. It's part of our Unspoken Network,
Speaker 3: which is our LGBTQ plus kind of focus shows, and
Speaker 3: you can find that on Spotify, Apple Music, iHeartMedia, app whatever,
Speaker 3: all the places. I also previously had worked on a
Speaker 3: show called Afterlives. If you are interested in learning more
Speaker 3: about wrikers and particularly some of the policy that you know,
Speaker 3: Eric Adams himself has worked to either stop from being
Speaker 3: effective or stop from making the reforms it's supposed to
Speaker 3: be happening. Regards to the whole Wriker situation, you should
Speaker 3: check out that show. Yeah, that's That's where I'm at.
Speaker 3: You can also follow me on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 3: pat not Pratt. That's p A T T n O
Speaker 3: T p R A T T. People get my last.
Speaker 2: Name wrong a lot, we'll put them in the description. Yeah, yeah, Joey,
Speaker 2: thank you for coming on.
Speaker 1: And fuck I hope, I hope, I hope we all
Speaker 1: get rid of our fucking Beyers because Jesus Christ, oh God.
Speaker 3: Yah Future the Democratic Party, Lory Light put Eric Adams
Speaker 3: twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: Let's go get me.
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Speaker 3: You listen to podcasts.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.