Eric Adams – Part 2: Sour Cream & Onion Flavored Corruption

In Part 2 of our Eric Adams deep-dive – Seena, Ariel, and Justin continue exploring how the former mayor (and current Albanian citizen) left the city with a $12 billion budget shortfall, led his entire team to federal indictments, and temporarily ended all racism with his cryptocurrency.

00:02:30 — The episode properly begins. Seena sets up Part 2 as covering the ramifications of the Turkish pivot, additional scam highlights, and the moment the feds come knocking.

00:05:00 — Ariel takes the audience through Adams' relationship with the truth via a catalog of minor biographical lies: the fake gun story blamed on a nonexistent co-author, the skateboarding claim that required his office to officially define a plywood board with metal wheels as a skateboard, the New Jersey residency mystery resolved by a press tour of an apartment he may or may not have lived in.

00:07:30 — The FBI raids begin. Search warrants hit his fundraiser and staffers. Agents seize his phones. The personal phone is not on him. He produces it the next day claiming he changed the password to preserve evidence and then forgot the new password.

00:09:00 — The Red Wedding. In a single week in September 2024, federal agents seize phones from the police commissioner, the first deputy mayor, the school chancellor, the deputy mayor for public safety, a senior advisor, and the chancellor's partner. Resignations follow like dominoes through October.

00:11:20 — The indictment. Five federal counts. Adams becomes the first sitting New York City mayor charged with a federal crime. He pleads not guilty and calls it politically motivated.

00:13:50 — The Trump pivot and the DOJ dismissal. Adams cozies up to Trump, cancels MLK Day events to attend the inauguration, and the Justice Department drops his case — explicitly, in writing, not based on the evidence but to preserve his ability to support the president's immigration agenda. The Klobuchar-Bove hearing plays out live. Danielle Sassoon, Trump appointee and Scalia clerk, refuses to drop the case and resigns. Six other prosecutors follow.

00:30:20 — The chip bribe. Winnie Greco hands a city reporter a bag of Herr's sour cream and onion chips at a Whole Foods. Inside: $300 in cash. Greco's lawyer calls it a Chinese cultural gesture of friendship. It is not.

00:36:10 — The NYC Token. Adams launches a cryptocurrency post-mayoralty at a Times Square press conference, claims it will fight antisemitism, calls blockchain technology block change technology twice on Fox News, watches it hit a $600 million market cap, then watches it crash 80% when a wallet linked to the deployer withdraws $2.5 million in liquidity. Classic rug pull. Frank Carone is involved.

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Music Credit and Sound FX: https://twitter.com/gograntgordon

Season Cover Art by: Cierra Monico

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