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The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, is expected to turn himself in Wednesday morning with at least four other defendants.New York City’s former buildings commissioner is expected to surrender on Wednesday after a lengthy wiretap investigation of bribery that ensnared at least four other defendants, according to people with knowledge of the matter.The former commissioner, Eric Ulrich, is expected to be arraigned later in the day with the other defendants, among them two generous donors to the 2021 campaign of Mayor Eric Adams. Mr. Ulrich, a former city councilman, was appointed by Mr. Adams in May 2022, but resigned six months later, after the investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office was reported.While the specific charges are not yet clear, Mr. Ulrich’s indictment is expected to include bribery-related crimes. The other men are expected to be accused of seeking favors from him related to his official position, the people with knowledge of the matter said.Among those expected to be arraigned along with Mr. Ulrich are Joseph and Anthony Livreri, brothers who own a Queens pizzeria; Michael Mazzio, who operates a Brooklyn towing company; and Mark Caller, a Brooklyn real estate developer who is expected to face charges for having offered Mr. Ulrich a discounted luxury apartment.A spokeswoman for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, declined to comment, but the office sent out an advisory Tuesday evening saying that Mr. Bragg and the head of the city’s investigation department, Jocelyn Strauber, would make an announcement at 1 p.m. tomorrow. The arraignments will likely follow.A lawyer for Mr. Caller, Benjamin Brafman, said his client “intends to plead not guilty and fully expects to be exonerated.”James R. Froccaro, Mr. Mazzio’s lawyer, said the tow company operator would enter a plea of not guilty, adding, “He’s innocent.”Mr. Ulrich’s lawyer, Samuel M. Braverman, has said in recent months that he would not respond to any allegations against his client before seeing the charges in an indictment. On Tuesday, he cited that statement when asked for comment.A lawyer for the Livreris could not be reached for comment.In the course of the investigation, prosecutors looked into potential connections between Mr. Ulrich and organized crime. Law enforcement officials have identified Mr. Mazzio and the Livreri brothers as having connections to organized crime, though it is not yet clear what role that may play in the case.The mayor is not expected to be charged, but his name has come up several times in connection with the investigation.Mr. Ulrich told prosecutors that the mayor had warned him to watch his back and watch his phones, which the commissioner took to mean he was under investigation. The mayor has denied having done so, or having any knowledge of the investigation before its existence was reported.Several of those who face charges — including Mr. Ulrich, the Livreri brothers and Mr. Mazzio — hosted a 2021 fund-raiser for the mayor, which brought in a total of $140,900, according to the news outlet The City. Two days later, the outlet reported, Mr. Caller held a party on the roof of his Brooklyn office building that raised $47,050 for the mayor’s campaign.The investigation also made use of a wiretap on Mr. Ulrich’s phone, and the mayor was among those whose conversations were intercepted. There is no indication that the mayor’s conversations implicated him in any criminal conduct, the people familiar with the inquiry have said.A spokesman for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More
A group of mostly left-leaning Democrats held an early strategy meeting to discuss how they might defeat Mr. Adams in 2025. It won’t be easy.On a warm July evening, as Mayor Eric Adams visited Staten Island to highlight his work on public safety at a town hall meeting, a cross section of some of New York City’s progressive class was nearby, plotting how to make the mayor’s first term his last.The group had been summoned for a “completely confidential” dinner meeting to discuss how to take on “a dangerous man,” according to an invitation obtained by The New York Times.The dinner included members of some of the city’s most important left-leaning institutions, including the Working Families Party, and staffers from former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. There was also a potential challenger they were hoping to recruit: Antonio Reynoso, the 40-year old Dominican American lawmaker who succeeded Mr. Adams as Brooklyn borough president.As the group dined on a vegetarian menu of homegrown squash Parmesan and beet salad, they strategized over how to harness festering discontent and assemble a coalition capable of beating the mayor in the 2025 Democratic primary — an unusual pushback to a party incumbent, especially this early in his tenure.“This is a room full of people who truly believe in the ability to go up against Adams and win,” said Cristina González, one of the hosts, on Thursday, after word of the meeting leaked.Mr. Adams will likely be a heavy favorite to capture a second term.He remains broadly popular with the coalition of Black and Latino voters outside of Manhattan that sent him to Gracie Mansion. He has already built a campaign war chest that is expected to hit $4.6 million with matching funds, and barring a dramatic reversal, the incumbent mayor would likely enjoy the support of the city’s most powerful labor unions.Evan Thies, a spokesman for the Adams campaign, said in a statement that the mayor had lowered crime and “invested billions of dollars in working people” and that polls showed he had strong support from New Yorkers.“The fact that these folks would rather play politics in some back room two years before the election, instead of help the mayor help working people, tells you all you need to know about what they really care about: their own power,” he said.Liberal and progressive Democrats have made little secret of their dismay over Mr. Adams, a centrist former police captain who ran on a public safety message. They have assailed his moves to cut library funding and universal prekindergarten, his efforts to delay the closing of the Rikers Island jail complex, and his response to the migrant crisis, among other policies.The dinner was perhaps the clearest sign yet that they are now openly strategizing how best to put forward a formidable challenger.Ms. González, an alumni of the de Blasio administration who hosted the dinner with her partner Janos Marton, a civil rights advocate who ran for Manhattan district attorney in 2021, at their Staten Island home, described the event as part of a “serious effort” to rally around a progressive candidate who can actually win.Mr. Reynoso, the only elected official at the dinner, acknowledged that the left was “trying to coalesce early to find one candidate. The strategy is to start early and find one strong candidate this time.”In an interview, Mr. Reynoso said he was not interested.Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, said he was uninterested in challenging Mr. Adams, but understood the desire for the left to coalesce behind one candidate as early as possible.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“I got elected to be the borough president of Brooklyn,” Mr. Reynoso said. “It’s a big borough, and I have a big job.”Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, has made a habit of using the left as a foil, blaming progressives for spikes in crime because they support policies like bail reform and favor reducing the amount of money spent on policing. The mayor has challenged the definition of what it means to be a progressive and often refers to himself as the “original progressive.”But Mr. Adams has also faced a series of negative headlines in recent weeks and has struggled to respond to the migrant crisis — a situation that has soured his relationship with President Biden and led to people sleeping on the streets in Midtown Manhattan.Progressives are broadly unhappy with Mayor Adams and are looking for a challenger to face him in 2025. Dave Sanders for The New York Times“It’s clear that Adams is vulnerable. What remains to be determined is, if there’s a viable candidate to challenge him,” said Rebecca Katz, a liberal operative who has not been part of the anti-Adams discussions, but works with Representative Jamaal Bowman, whose name has been floated as a possible opponent.Some progressive leaders appear to be coalescing around the idea that the ideal candidate would be a Black or Latino Democrat running to the left of Mr. Adams, but with appeal to a broader ideological range of voters. Even so, that candidate would face a daunting challenge.Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, has discussed running with people in politics, but has not made a decision, according to a person familiar with the matter.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator who represents the Brooklyn district Mr. Adams once did, is also said to be in the early stages of considering a run. Mr. Myrie, a lawyer who has made affordable housing a top priority in Albany, declined to comment. But a person familiar with his thinking said he had not moved toward assembling a campaign — despite being pushed by political allies.Others have tried to convince Mr. Bowman to enter the race. Mr. Bowman, an outspoken former middle school principal, has made no secret of his differences with Mr. Adams over policing and city resources for schools and libraries, but he currently lives in Yonkers in Westchester County and told The Times this spring that he was not interested in running.New York City officials were criticized for forcing migrants to sleep and stay outside for days, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOther attendees at the July dinner included Rodrigo Camarena, director of Immigration Advocates Network, and Nisha Agarwal, a former commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs under Mr. de Blasio.Ms. González, who is Puerto Rican, said it was important that a viable challenger to Mr. Adams be a person of color. The mayor has already said that certain attacks against him were based on his race. He has begun to lean heavily on his base of religious supporters.“It needs to be a person of color to inoculate them against specific kinds of attacks,” she said. “Those are also the people who are most impacted by his policies right now — it’s important to have someone from the community who is most impacted.”In the 2021 mayoral primary, the city’s progressives had a disastrous showing. The former city comptroller, Scott Stringer, faced sexual harassment allegations and was abandoned by many of his progressive endorsers. Some on the left supported Dianne Morales, who faced a revolt from her staff. Much of the left finally threw their support behind Maya Wiley, a former top lawyer for Mr. de Blasio; she finished a distant third.“Whoever challenges this mayor has to be equipped — nothing amateurish,” said Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, a co-chairwoman of the Council’s progressive caucus. “We really need to prop up someone who will unite a broad coalition, understand the progressives and work in collaboration with us.”Alyssa Cass, a political strategist with Slingshot Strategies who worked on Mr. Yang’s campaign, said the mayor’s opponents should be looking someone with broad ideological appeal.“Any challenge to Mayor Adams that hopes to be anything other than a pipe dream requires a candidate who can make the case that the functioning of the city is reaching a point of no return — and can make that case with just about every voter who did not support the mayor in 2021,” Ms. Cass said.Another dinner guest was Bill Neidhardt, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio who worked on Brandon Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign in Chicago. He said the discussion focused on “frustrations with the Adams administration,” including his response to wildfire smoke that darkened the skies this summer.There was “a lot of shared urgency about the moment we’re in right now,” he said, adding: “Also Cristina might be the best chef in all of Staten Island.” More
Mayor Eric Adams has not been implicated in any wrongdoing, but District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg has targeted people who are in the mayor’s circle.The Manhattan district attorney’s office is prosecuting two criminal cases that come uncomfortably close to Mayor Eric Adams, bringing unwanted attention to the administration and raising questions about Mr. Adams’s relationships with the accused.One involves Mr. Adams’s former buildings commissioner, who has been charged in a sealed indictment with corruption-related crimes, according to two people familiar with the investigation who asked for anonymity to discuss sealed charges.In the other, six people — including a longtime friend of the mayor, Dwayne Montgomery — were charged with conspiring to illegally funnel money to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign in 2021.The cases have subjected the mayor’s associates — and to a degree, Mr. Adams himself — to the scrutiny of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. While there is no suggestion that Mr. Adams is under criminal investigation, the cases are not the first to place the mayor, who touts his law-and-order credentials, in the awkward position of having to explain his conduct or that of his associates.Since taking office in January 2022, the mayor also has been linked with a Brooklyn pastor known as the “bling bishop” who was charged with fraud and extortion and to twin brothers who share a criminal history involving money laundering.In the most recent case, the sealed indictment against the mayor’s former buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich, Mr. Adams has faced questions about his relationship with the former agency head.Mr. Ulrich resigned in November 2022, days after investigators with the district attorney’s office seized his phone and he was questioned by prosecutors. He told them that months earlier, Mayor Adams had warned him that he was the focus of a criminal investigation, two of the people said. (Mr. Ulrich’s comments to prosecutors were first reported by The Daily News.)Mr. Adams has denied that he gave any warning, which would not appear to violate state laws in any event. A spokesman for Mr. Adams said in a statement Thursday that the mayor had not received any requests from the Manhattan district attorney regarding either Mr. Ulrich or the straw donor case.“The mayor hasn’t spoken to Mr. Ulrich or Mr. Montgomery about either of the respective investigations, either before or after they became public,” he said.Mayor Eric Adams, a former police captain, has presented himself as a force for law and order. Dave Sanders for The New York TimesIn recent weeks, a grand jury voted to charge Mr. Ulrich with having accepted a discounted apartment from a real estate developer who has had business before the city, the people said. Mr. Ulrich accepted at least some of the benefit while he was still in charge of the agency. The Brooklyn-based developer, Mark Caller, is also charged in the indictment, the people said.The charges also touch on what prosecutors are expected to characterize as Mr. Ulrich’s ties to organized crime, the people said. The indictment is likely to be announced by Mr. Bragg in September.A lawyer for Mr. Ulrich, Samuel M. Braverman, said last month that until he saw the charges in an indictment, he would not comment. On Thursday, he said he had nothing to add.Mr. Caller’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said he had not seen the indictment but that he expected it to include an allegation that Mr. Ulrich received a discounted apartment in one of Mr. Caller’s buildings.“That is patently false,” Mr. Brafman said. “He paid market rate without any discount whatsoever,” Mr. Brafman said, adding that Mr. Ulrich had rented the apartment before becoming buildings commissioner.Last month, Mr. Bragg announced the indictment of the six people who he said had recruited and reimbursed individual donors to Mr. Adams’s campaign in order to illegally obtain more money from the city. The lead defendant is Mr. Montgomery, a retired Police Department inspector, longtime friend of the mayor and a former colleague on the force. Prosecutors said that the defendants had sought to influence the administration.According to court papers filed by the district attorney’s office, Mr. Montgomery and Rachel Atcheson, a close aide to Mr. Adams, set up a fund-raiser at which straw donors gave the campaign $250 apiece. Neither Ms. Atcheson nor Mr. Adams have been accused of wrongdoing.New York City has a matching funds program designed to dilute the influence of big donors that rewards campaigns for donations of up to $250 from residents. For every personal donation of that amount to a mayoral campaign, the city gives a campaign $2,000.The mayor, a retired police captain, campaigned as a tough-on-crime candidate who would restore order to New York City in the wake of the pandemic. In a Monday news conference, Mr. Adams said that he would not be distracted by the case against Mr. Ulrich.“The D.A. has his job,” he said. “I have my job.”Mr. Bragg, who like Mr. Adams was elected in 2021, has studiously avoided direct confrontation with the mayor, and the two men maintain a cordial relationship. But the district attorney, a former federal prosecutor who handled public corruption cases, has said he wants his office to pursue investigations into the powerful.District Attorney Alvin Bragg has maintained a relationship with the mayor even as investigations proceed.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesA spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg declined to comment on either of the cases.Mr. Ulrich told prosecutors that Mr. Adams’s warning was delivered during a brief meeting in 2022, the people said. Beforehand, the mayor asked Mr. Ulrich to hand his phone to an associate, they said.Then, as the two men talked, Mr. Adams warned Mr. Ulrich to “watch your back and watch your phones,” according to the people. Mr. Ulrich, they said, later told prosecutors that he understood the mayor to mean that he was a focus of a criminal investigation.At the Monday news conference, Mr. Adams said that he had not even known that Mr. Ulrich was under criminal investigation.Mr. Adams has shown few qualms about maintaining ties with people who have been accused of wrongdoing. He appointed Mr. Ulrich to head the buildings department despite a letter Mr. Ulrich had written four years earlier on behalf of a constituent with mob ties, and despite Mr. Ulrich’s acknowledged gambling and alcohol addictions.The mayor also remains close with Johnny and Robert Petrosyants, twin brothers who pleaded guilty to financial crimes in 2014 and have continued to engage in a pattern of questionable business dealings, according to a New York Times investigation.“I’m going to talk with people who have stumbled and fell,” Mr. Adams has said of the Petrosyants. “Because I’m perfectly imperfect, and this is a city made up of perfectly imperfect people.”Supporters and members of the Adams administration are not Mr. Bragg’s only recent City Hall targets: His prosecutors are pursuing a third case, which focuses on the administration of Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio.The district attorney’s office is expected, in the coming weeks, to unveil charges against Howard Redmond, the head of Mr. de Blasio’s security detail. Mr. Redmond has been accused of blocking an investigation into the misuse of the detail by Mr. de Blasio, including bringing his security team on unauthorized city-financed trips related to his failed 2020 presidential bid.A lawyer for Mr. Redmond declined to comment.In June, Mr. de Blasio was fined close to $500,000 by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board for that conduct. Mr. de Blasio has appealed that ruling. More
Since last year, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have arrived in New York City from the southern border and around the world, seeking a better life in a place that has welcomed generations of immigrants since its founding.What many of those migrants have found instead is a tepid welcome amid a housing crisis that has left the city barely equipped to offer them more than a meal in the hotels used to house a booming homeless population. They are lucky if they get a bed.In recent days, the slapdash system the city has built to address the crisis has broken down completely, leaving migrants sleeping on Midtown streets. The city says there is no more room for them, but advocates say it needs to try harder.And on Sunday, The Times reported that a shady contractor tapped by New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, to send asylum seekers upstate and provide them with services harassed them instead. The city’s taxpayers are footing the bill for this abuse, to the tune of $432 million. The curiously large, no-bid contract with DocGo, a medical services company, should never have been signed and needs to be terminated.It’s true, as Mr. Adams has repeatedly said, that this crisis is a national issue and requires action from the White House and Congress. Cities like New York, which has more than 100,000 people living in shelters, cannot be expected to welcome asylum seekers on their own. More than 90,000 migrants have arrived in New York City over the past year, many as part of a political stunt by Texas, Florida and Arizona. Though immigrants strengthen the U.S. economy and are a vital part of the fabric of the democracy, local governments can’t simply absorb tens of thousands of people without help — especially for housing — and their taxpayers, in New York and elsewhere, shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill.Still, there is something particularly disappointing about New York City’s official response to the asylum seekers, unfolding under the gaze of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Nearly four in 10 city residents were born outside the United States. Waves of immigrants — Dutch, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Latino and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, along with many others — helped build this city. So did millions of Black Americans who chased dreams in the city after fleeing the tyranny of the Jim Crow South.That rich legacy doesn’t seem to be on Mr. Adams’s mind. Since the moment the migrants began showing up last spring, he has made clear he wants little to do with the practical or humanitarian issues their arrival has raised. The mayor has provided basic services for the migrants, and rightly so. But at every turn, he has done so grudgingly.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesMr. Adams has complained loudly that the immigrants were a “burden” on the city’s resources. His administration shut down a welcome center at the Port Authority bus terminal where volunteers had for months helped connect asylum seekers to services.He said the migrants would cost the city $4.3 billion over the next two fiscal years, a figure New York’s nonpartisan budget watchdog said is probably $1.2 billion too high. He tried to undo a 1981 court decree that requires the city to provide shelter to anyone who needs it.He erected giant tents — now dismantled — to house the migrants in remote areas of the city inaccessible to public transit, then made it exceedingly difficult for nonprofit groups to provide critical services to this vulnerable population, like legal assistance and even help navigating the city and its laws. Such services could help migrants acclimate to life in New York City and could ease complaints from neighbors of the hotels the city is using to house many migrants.The Adams administration has been warehousing asylum seekers instead of putting the country’s largest municipal government to work helping them build new lives, in New York or wherever else they may want to go. This summer the Adams administration printed fliers to dissuade migrants from seeking new lives in New York, leaflets that sum up the mayor’s overall approach and betray the promise and spirit of New York as a home for people from around the world.New York’s leaders are supposed to be different. The city’s voters didn’t intend to elect a mayor who acted like Greg Abbott, the Texas governor who sent migrants to cities across the country, including New York. Nor did they vote for someone like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the presidential candidate who used asylum seekers for political sport, flying them to the resort island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts at taxpayer expense just to own the libs.New York can do better.First, it seems clear that Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York needs to step in and demonstrate the concern lacking from City Hall. It may be in the best interest of both taxpayers and the asylum seekers for the governor to name an expert manager to oversee the crisis, which is clearly too much for the mayor to handle — a kind of New York asylum czar.That wouldn’t free Mr. Adams to simply throw up his hands and walk away from the obligations the city has to these tens of thousands of people, whether they turn out to be temporary guests or newly minted New Yorkers.The mayor could make a big difference quickly by welcoming established nonprofit groups — not no-bid profiteers — to provide critical services where migrants are being housed. Those services should include English-language classes, as well as basic job certification courses to help asylum seekers find work.Despite Mr. Adams’s cold approach, many nonprofits and private volunteers and some municipal workers are engaged in this humanitarian work. In one small example, Dr. Theodore G. Long, a senior vice president at the city’s public hospital system, noticed many meals at the facilities used to house migrants weren’t being eaten, so he conducted a survey to find out why. The results? “We swapped out roast beef and did Italian food instead,” he told me. “I figured, let’s ask people what they want instead of guessing.”That’s the kind of welcome a city of immigrants provides.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More
Referred to as “Co-Conspirator 1” in the indictment of Donald Trump, the former prosecutor, mayor and presidential lawyer faces an uncertain legal future.Rudolph W. Giuliani is Co-Conspirator 1.Mr. Giuliani, the crime-fighter who rose from a federal prosecutor’s office to lead New York City at its moment of deepest crisis, is not named in the indictment that was filed Tuesday accusing his former client, Donald J. Trump, of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.But Co-Conspirator 1, who Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer acknowledged appeared to be his client, figures in each of the three conspiracies it alleges took place — leaving open the possibility that Mr. Giuliani could be charged himself.The next chapter in his long public life will now be written by the special counsel who filed the indictment, Jack Smith, who can prosecute him, pressure him into cooperating or leave him dangling, potentially to be indicted by a district attorney investigating election interference in Georgia.The former mayor who made his name as a lawman now faces a reckoning with the law.Mr. Giuliani’s relationship with Mr. Trump hangs in the balance. A person close to Mr. Trump who spoke confidentially to describe a private relationship said that while they don’t speak regularly, the former president retains a fondness for Mr. Giuliani born from his stint as mayor, when the two dealt with each other often.But in recent years, their relationship has been on uneven footing as the former president had refused to pay his former lawyer’s legal bills amid mounting legal troubles for both, infuriating Mr. Giuliani’s allies. The former president had told advisers that he did not want Mr. Giuliani to be reimbursed, The New York Times reported.This year, filings suggest, Mr. Trump’s super PAC paid a legal vendor working on Mr. Giuliani’s behalf. The $340,000 payment was made weeks before Mr. Giuliani met voluntarily with Mr. Smith’s office — a meeting that took place under a proffer agreement, in which prosecutors consent to not use any statements during an interview in criminal proceedings unless it is determined that the subject was lying. The agreement does not mean that prosecutors will not charge Mr. Giuliani, nor does it indicate they will seek his cooperation.The payment appeared to bail Mr. Giuliani out of a difficult financial situation. Before it was made, he had told the federal judge presiding over a defamation lawsuit filed against him by two Georgia election workers that he could not afford to pay some of his legal expenses.Tuesday’s indictment, filed in Federal District Court in Washington, details five ways in which six co-conspirators aided Mr. Trump. The attempts begin with efforts to persuade state officials — sometimes by using threats — to overturn the legitimate vote so that false electors could deliver their support to Mr. Trump in the Electoral College. They end with attempts to flip the result even after the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Giuliani, 79, was involved in every step, the indictment says. He bullied and cajoled officials in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; helped convene slates of fraudulent electors to cast ballots for Mr. Trump; falsely claimed that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn the election; and, finally, called lawmakers after the attack on the Capitol, asking that they delay the election’s certification.Mr. Giuliani became one of Mr. Trump’s foremost political defenders after the 2020 election.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn Tuesday, Mr. Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert J. Costello, said that his client appeared to be the person identified as Co-Conspirator 1 before blasting the indictment, saying it “eviscerates the First Amendment” and was meant to disrupt Mr. Trump’s third presidential campaign.“Every fact that Mayor Giuliani possesses about this case establishes the good-faith basis President Donald Trump had for the action that he took,” Mr. Costello said.“This indictment underscores the tragic reality of our two-tiered justice system — one for the regime in power and the other for anyone who dares to oppose the ruling regime,” Ted Goodman, political adviser to Mr. Giuliani, said on Wednesday.By this stage of his alliance with the former president, Mr. Giuliani is used to legal trouble.The two men have known each other for decades. After serving in the Reagan Justice Department, Mr. Giuliani in 1983 became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the most prominent legal posts in the government. There, he focused on disrupting organized crime, zeroing in on the five Mafia families of New York. At the same time, Mr. Trump was leveraging his real estate empire to burnish his tabloid celebrity.The men shared a thirst for public attention and a harsh law-and-order politics that kept them aligned after Mr. Giuliani was elected mayor in 1993.His leadership after the Sept. 11 attacks briefly vaulted Mr. Giuliani to the pinnacle of American public life; he was named Time magazine’s person of the year, his leadership compared to that of Winston Churchill. But after Mr. Giuliani left office at the end of 2001 he sank toward irrelevancy, a decline reflected in his failed 2008 Republican presidential campaign.When he re-emerged, it was on behalf of Mr. Trump. He was an omnipresent surrogate for the candidate in the final stages of the 2016 campaign and never abandoned Mr. Trump once he became president. In 2018 — despite having been passed over for the position he coveted, secretary of state — Mr. Giuliani began working as a lawyer for Mr. Trump.Tuesday’s indictment accuses Mr. Trump and co-conspirator 1 of attacking the underpinnings of American democracy.Al Drago for The New York TimesBy that time, the president was fighting a first special counsel investigation, led by Robert S. Mueller III, which concerned possible Russian interference in the election. Mr. Giuliani joined the battle with gusto, saying that Mr. Trump was being targeted for his politics.Like several of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Mr. Giuliani became embroiled in the legal travails of his client. He had tried to push a new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr. as Mr. Biden emerged as Mr. Trump’s chief rival in the 2020 presidential race. Mr. Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine prompted federal prosecutors in Manhattan to open an investigation into the man who had once led the office.Mr. Smith has homed in on the aftermath of Mr. Biden’s victory that year. The indictment says that Mr. Trump on Nov. 14, 2020, appointed Mr. Giuliani to “spearhead his efforts going forward to challenge the election results.”Mr. Giuliani took up the mission, meeting with speakers of the house in Arizona and Michigan, asking them to replace their proper electors with groups that would cast votes for Mr. Trump. In all, Mr. Giuliani helped coordinate a scheme to put forward fraudulent slates of electors in seven states, the indictment said.In Georgia, Mr. Giuliani organized a presentation for lawmakers where people claiming to be electoral fraud experts falsely claimed that 10,000 dead people had voted.And after the attack on the U.S. Capitol delayed the certification of the election, Mr. Giuliani helped Mr. Trump lobby lawmakers, unsuccessfully, to keep Mr. Biden out of the White House.When Mr. Trump left office, the legal pressure on Mr. Giuliani escalated.FB.I. agents searched his home and office, seizing cellphones and computers. The federal investigation into Mr. Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine ended in 2022 with no charges, but he was sued by voting machine companies that he claimed had helped engineer Mr. Biden’s victory.In June, his law license was suspended in connection with the statements he made about the 2020 election. Mr. Giuliani’s legal bills piled up. Mr. Trump was declining to pay him even as Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, investigated him for his attempts to overturn the election in Georgia.Soon, Mr. Smith would join her.Maggie Haberman More
The mayor is drawing challengers more than a year before the election, a sign that she will face a tough race in a city where most voters remain in a foul mood.London Breed sailed to victory as the mayor of San Francisco. A local who rose from the housing projects to become the first Black woman to lead the liberal city, she won a special election in 2018 and then a full term in a landslide the following year. Times were good; the pandemic had yet to happen. If homelessness and crime worried San Franciscans, few of them blamed her.No longer. Now San Francisco is reeling, its downtown plagued by fentanyl markets and tent camps, its employers straining to repopulate office buildings with a decidedly more remote labor force. More than 70 percent of voters have told pollsters that the city is on the wrong track, and some 66 percent disapprove of the mayor’s job performance.With more than a year to go before the next mayoral election, Mayor Breed has already drawn a challenge from a former ally, Ahsha Safaí, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who outpolled her in a recent survey and who was building a campaign on addressing crime, especially what he called the “retail theft crisis.” And last week, word leaked from San Francisco political circles that Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, was also planning a mayoral run.The list will inevitably grow, said Jim Ross, a longtime Bay Area political consultant who ran the 2003 San Francisco mayoral campaign of now-Governor Gavin Newsom of California.London Breed sailed to re-election four years ago as the mayor of San Francisco.Clara Mokri for The New York Times“Anything less than 10 people running in a race for mayor is a small field for San Francisco,” Mr. Ross said. “But people getting in this early and with these kinds of resources? It’s not a good sign for any incumbent. She’s going to have a challenging race.”As the pandemic has ebbed, its fiscal, spiritual and human impact has bedeviled mayors from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles. But San Francisco has struggled more than most places from the fallout of Covid-19 lockdowns. Tech workers who fled downtown high rises and lofts when the pandemic hit have gotten used to remote work and have resisted returning. One-third of offices in commercial buildings downtown are vacant.Homeless people and drug users who overtook sidewalks in the city core, filling the vacuum left by absent pedestrian traffic, have sorely tested San Francisco’s ability to house and treat them, and to take back its public spaces. Exhausted and unnerved, San Franciscans have split across political, racial and class lines over how to move forward.Parents in the city school district last year led the successful recall of three board members who were criticized for keeping students out of classrooms too long during the pandemic and prioritizing social justice goals. Four months later, in June 2022, voters ousted a progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who was faulted for being too lenient in his prosecutions.One-third of offices in commercial buildings downtown are vacant, and many employees have stayed home to work remotely.Aaron Wojack for The New York TimesMayor Breed herself has fed into the outrage. In December 2021, she pointedly declared that she was sick of the petty crimes and drug use in San Francisco. She never took a position on the recall of Mr. Boudin, which political insiders viewed as a tacit endorsement. And she backed the school board recall.“It’s an incredibly difficult environment to be an incumbent in,” said Maggie Muir, a spokeswoman for Ms. Breed’s campaign.“The mayor is working incredibly hard,” Ms. Muir added. “She is making progress on downtown revitalization. She’s making progress — and yes it’s not as fast as some folks would have liked, on attacking the open-air drug markets.”Police data show homicides up by 12 percent and robberies 13 percent higher over the past 12 months. Motor vehicle thefts increased by 9 percent, but burglaries were down by 8 percent. The overdose crisis has continued unabated, with an average of about two people dying of drug overdoses every day.A pro-business moderate with progressive roots, Ms. Breed, 48, won the mayor’s job five years ago in a special election after the death of Ed Lee, the former mayor. She was re-elected with 70 percent of the vote the next year. Her current term was set to expire in 2023, but voters last year agreed to move city elections to even-numbered years starting in 2024, grouping them with federal and statewide elections, dramatically changing the mix of voters likely to turn out.More than 70 percent of voters have told pollsters that the city is on the wrong track, and some 66 percent disapprove of the mayor’s job performance. Jim Wilson/The New York TimesFurther complicating the picture is the city’s system for electing local officials, which allows voters to choose up to 10 candidates in order of preference. It is unclear how the combination of the presidential year timing and the ranked-choice system will shake out for Mayor Breed. Some analysts predict the even-year vote will yield an electorate that is more progressive than the mayor, but in elections past, the ranked-choice system has benefited her.“In the general election especially, you’ll have a lot more young people and a more ethnically diverse population,” said Adam Probolsky, president of the nonpartisan California-based polling firm Probolsky Research, whose surveys since April have shown a marked drop in support for the mayor. The timing could also attract San Franciscans who vote less regularly, he added, and who may not be as familiar with the candidates.That could create lanes for challengers to Mayor Breed.Mr. Safaí launched his candidacy in May and has been especially vocal about retail theft. “It’s the brazen nature of it. It’s the way in which people believe they can just walk into stores, grab things and walk out with impunity,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. Crime, he said, “is hitting every corner of our city.”Mr. Safaí, who was born in Iran and has a graduate degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, began his San Francisco political career working in City Hall under former mayors Willie Brown and Gavin Newsom.He has firsthand experience of the city’s crime problem. Thieves broke into his house last fall while it was undergoing renovations and hauled away the stove and microwave. Mr. Safaí is calling for the hiring of 500 additional police officers.Speculation also has focused on Phil Ting, a liberal state legislator who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee and is favored by the city’s progressives; his spokeswoman said on Wednesday that he declined to comment. The progressive president of the Board of Supervisors, Aaron Peskin, is also discussed as a potential candidate, although Mr. Peskin, a fixture of San Francisco politics for the past quarter century, seemed unequivocal in an interview Wednesday that he was not running.“I am tired, and my next chapter in life is not in electoral politics,” he said. “It’s time for me to exit the stage.”Two people with knowledge of Mr. Lurie’s campaign plans confirmed that he was hosting gatherings and recruiting staff in advance of a mayoral run but declined to be named because the campaign has yet to formally launch. Mr. Lurie did not respond to requests for an interview. The San Francisco Standard, a city news site, was first to report last week that Mr. Lurie intended to challenge Ms. Breed.This week, word leaked from San Francisco political circles that Daniel Lurie, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who declared in March that “we have to rebuild our reputation and our city,” was also planning a mayoral run. Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated PressA native San Franciscan, Mr. Lurie is descended from one of the city’s most prominent families. His father, Rabbi Brian Lurie, was the executive director of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco; his mother, Miriam Lurie Haas, known as Mimi, is a billionaire businesswoman; and his stepfather, the late philanthropist Peter Haas, was a descendant of Levi Strauss.Mr. Lurie is a prominent philanthropist, too, and has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for anti-poverty programs through Tipping Point, a San Francisco nonprofit that he founded. His wife, Becca Prowda, is director of protocol for Governor Newsom. But in a city whose fierce local politics have been described as “a knife fight in a phone booth,” Mr. Lurie remains a political novice. He has never held office, and the knives are already out.“When you’re born or married into a billionaire family, you don’t have the experience to face hard challenges,” said Ms. Muir, the campaign spokeswoman for the mayor.Other political veterans said that Mr. Lurie might struggle to overcome his lack of name recognition among voters. “I’m sure he’s well known in the foundation community, and possibly with homeless organizations,” said Mary Jung, a longtime San Francisco political operative who supports the mayor.Mr. Probolsky, the pollster, warned that it is far too soon to count out Mayor Breed.“If you want to make the case that she’s vulnerable, she is,” he said. “But if you want to make the case that she’s done? Finished? Over? You can’t because you don’t know who will oppose her and how viable they’ll be.” More
Coaching sessions at the People’s Improv Theater were aimed at helping math experts connect with laypeople and give engaging presentations.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll solve for x and y, where x is a group of high-level mathematicians and y is an improvisational theater workshop. This one’s easy, even if you’re not very good at math. We’ll also look at Mayor Eric Adams’s fund-raising.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWhat’s funny about quadratic equations? Is there something to laugh at in Euclidean geometry?Those questions went unanswered in unusual coaching sessions last week, and no wonder: The instructor’s background is not in Cartesian geometry or matrix algebra but in improvisational theater and standup comedy.The students were mathematicians from across the country — assistant professors, postdoctoral students and a few who are months away from their Ph.D.s, along with Cindy Lawrence, the executive director and chief executive of the National Museum of Mathematics, which arranged the three-day workshop.The sessions were “not so much about being funny,” explained the instructor, Kihresha Redmond, the artistic director of the People’s Improv Theater, a comedy theater and improv training center on West 29th Street that is also known as the PIT. The purpose was to show the mathematicians how to do engaging presentations for laypeople.“You don’t get a Ph.D. because you’re just so-so at something,” Lawrence said, but mathematicians “may not be quick at responding to an audience and they may not be comfortable in front of a room of strangers. Improv helps you build those kinds of skills.”Redmond did not mention it to the group, but she knew something about math. “I thought it was something I was going to major in” when she went to college, she confided one morning last week, before the group arrived. “It was a last-minute left turn to theater.”One session with the mathematicians involved no scripts, no carefully rehearsed “to be or not to be” moments — and no math. It began with Redmond leading some loosening-up exercises. Later, as a drill in thinking fast and talking in front of an audience, she had the mathematicians conduct mock news conferences. They made up companies and products to promote and assigned someone in the group to be the spokeswoman fielding questions. The others in the group played reporters.Angela Avila, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington, said the think-on-your-feet training would be useful in her work, which involves using math to solve agricultural problems, like how many more cows could be fed in a given pasture if a dairy farmer increased the nutrient yield.She said she could use artificial intelligence and “big fancy equations” to come up with an answer, but if she explained it that way, there would probably be a lot of head-scratching.“If I am speaking line from line on my research paper, they’d get lost,” she said, “but if I connect with them and read the energy in the room, that won’t happen.”Lawrence, from the math museum, said she had invited women to the workshop because women are underrepresented in mathematics and in science, technology and engineering. “It’s a problem that self-perpetuates because young women who don’t see female mathematicians get the impression that math is a field that’s not for them, it’s for men,” she said.She wants the participants to help bring about more balance by serving as role models for girls: Each workshop participant is to present a talk about her specialty in a setting like a middle school. She said the idea was “to incentivize women who maybe already have an interest in reaching the younger generation to do so” before their focus is on the publish-or-perish pressures of tenure-track academics.“One of the women told me she was not looking forward to improv and went along with it because it was part of the program,” Lawrence said. “She said this turned her mind completely around.”WeatherOn a partly sunny day with a high near the mid-80s, prepare for a chance of showers and thunderstorms persisting through the evening. At night, temps will drop into the low 70s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Aug. 15 (Feast of the Assumption).The latest New York newsJohnny Milano for The New York TimesGilgo Beach killings: The wife of Rex Heuermann, the suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders, was away when the killings happened and has not been charged. Experts say it’s not unusual for the spouses of serial killers to be unaware of their crimes. Rikers management: The federal judge in charge of deciding whether New York City jails will be taken over by an outside authority expressed disapproval of how Rikers Island and other lockups are managed.Housing moves: Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a series of executive actions to promote residential real estate development and ease the state’s housing crisis.Museum director: Stephanie Hill Wilchfort, who most recently served as the president and chief executive of the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, will be the next director and president of the Museum of the City of New York.Remembering Chisholm: City officials approved designs for a monument in Prospect Park to Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress.Landmarks’ protector: Beverly Moss Spatt, who battled real estate and political interests as chairwoman of the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in the 1970s, died on Friday. She was 99.Amassing cash for a campaign that’s two years awayBenjamin Norman for The New York TimesEric Adams was a prodigious fund-raiser when he ran for mayor in 2021. Now, with his eye already on a second term, he is raising big money for 2025 — $1.3 million since January.My colleagues Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Nicholas Fandos write that Adams appears to be eager to amass a large war chest to fend off serious competitors. He faced seven serious opponents in the Democratic primary two years ago and won by only 7,197 votes.With matching funds that Adams campaign officials expect to receive under the city’s public financing system, his re-election effort is expected to have about $4.6 million on hand by the time the 2025 campaign gears up. The matching funds program can turn a $10 contribution from someone who lives in New York City into $90 for a campaign.Adams could be difficult to beat, despite recent setbacks. Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who was a campaign manager for Andrew Yang, an Adams opponent two years ago, said the mayor’s low approval rating was not terribly worrisome — it fell to 46 percent in a Siena College poll last month. Coffey noted that Michael Bloomberg’s approval rating dipped as low as 24 percent in his second year in office, but he went on to win two more terms.Among Adams’s donors are Marc Holliday and Steve Green, the chief executive and founder, respectively, of the city’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green. Each gave $2,100. Also on the list of Adams contributors are Alexander and Helena Durst, from the Durst real estate dynasty. In addition, the mayor has taken in $12,600 from people who work for Top Rock Holdings, a real estate investment firm.A fund-raiser for the mayor at a performance of the Broadway musical “New York, New York” last month was lucrative despite lackluster reviews for the show. Seats went for as much as $2,100 apiece. Adams’s campaign took in about $600,000 from the event, which a campaign spokesman said was organized by Frank Carone, Adams’s former chief of staff.The real estate industry is also making donations to Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose term runs through 2026. Of the $4.5 million her campaign raised from January through June, more than $885,000 came from developers and real estate investors. Among the donors contributing $18,000 — the new legal maximum for statewide candidates — were Holliday; members of the Durst family; and Scott Rechler and Jeff Blau. Both are Democratic megadonors whose firms are competing with Holliday’s for a casino license for the New York City area.METROPOLITAN diaryA sliceDear Diary:He carried the box while they held each other’s hands, their sweat stuck between warm, tanned palms.They walked down the cobblestone street, and she kept her heels out of cracks in the ground. New York heat held her neck. It smelled like new deodorant, smoke, like summertime.She put her head near his ear.They sat at the bottom of a Brooklyn stoop — the lights were on — and he passed her a slice.Their elbows touched.She wiped the corner of his lip and put her leg over his.He traced constellations between spots of orange oil on her scabby knees.“It tastes good,” she said.“The cheese?” he asked with a laugh.“Yeah.”He whispered in her ear.“But we’re on the street,” she said.“Come on,” he said, and took her hand again.— Laila Hartman-SigallIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero, Shivani Gonzalez and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nyimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More
