The October 7–20 cover story of New York by Andrew Rice is an examination of New York City mayor Eric Adams’s unfolding corruption scandal, including his indictment on charges such as bribery and solicitation of benefits from foreign nationals, and the series of events that has led to many members of administration being investigated by the federal government. “Not since the dying days of the Koch administration had the city appeared to be so much for sale, and never in the 126 years since the five boroughs unified had any mayor been personally charged with crimes of corruption,” notes Rice.
“Back in early September, when a half-dozen or so members of Eric Adams’s inner circle were served with warrants or subpoenas by the FBI, the editors asked me to figure out what the heck was going on at City Hall,” says Rice. I’ve covered city politics and government for years since the early 2000s, and I’ve seen my share of scandals, but nothing I’d written about before prepared me for the scale of the investigations into Adams and his inner circle. I was plugging along until one morning a couple of weeks ago when a well-connected source told me (correctly, as it turned out) that the mayor himself was going to be indicted. We had to throw the reporting process into overdrive — without even knowing whether Adams would still be the mayor by the time our next issue hit the newsstands. As of right now, he is still hanging in there, though how long he will last is anyone’s guess.”
Elsewhere in the issue, Tess Owen writes on how January 6 rioters are running their cell block like a gang and becoming more radicalized than ever, and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explores the city’s child-care crisis through her family’s experience after they accidentally found themselves becoming a day care when their sons’ Brooklyn nursery lost its license.