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Tracking Investigations In Eric Adams’s Orbit
Investigations into Adams and associates Adams, his campaign and Turkey Senior City Hall aides and associates Former police commissioner’s brother Other legal matters More
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City Hall Seeks New York Police Commissioner’s Resignation
Edward Caban has faced increasing pressure since last week, when federal agents searched the homes of top officials in the Adams administration and confiscated electronic devices.Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is seeking the resignation of Edward A. Caban, New York’s police commissioner, less than a week after agents seized the commissioner’s phone in one of several federal investigations that have engulfed City Hall, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.Commissioner Caban has been under growing pressure to step aside since last Thursday, when news broke that federal agents had taken his cellphone, as well as phones belonging to several of the highest-ranking officials in the Adams administration.The mayor, a retired police captain who served on the force with the commissioner’s father and was close to him, appointed Mr. Caban in July 2023, making him the department’s first Latino commissioner.But the seizure of the phone belonging to the man in charge of the nation’s largest police force sent shock waves through the agency’s headquarters and City Hall. Agents last week also seized the phones of the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson, a retired police inspector who is one of the mayor’s closest confidants.The mayor’s own phones were seized in a separate earlier investigation.None of the people have been charged with a crime, but the raids buffeted the administration of Mr. Adams, which was already reeling from other legal problems. They include a federal inquiry into whether Mr. Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to collect illegal foreign donations in exchange for pressuring the Fire Department to sign off on a new high-rise Turkish consulate in Manhattan, despite safety concerns.It was not clear whether Commissioner Caban would actually resign. The Police Department did not immediately offer a comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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What to Know About Supreme Court Justices’ Book Deals
For the justices, selling books remains one of the few ways to earn income outside the court.For Supreme Court justices, books deals have become a highly lucrative way to shape the public narrative of their lives and legacies.The money brought in by those deals, one of the few ways that they can supplement their income, often far eclipses their salaries, roughly $300,000.A majority of the current justices have published books, most recently Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her memoir, “Lovely One,” which traces the arc of her family from the segregated Jim Crow South to her rise to the Supreme Court, was released this week and shot up Amazon’s best-seller list.Here’s a closer look.Which justices have written books?Six of the nine justices have written books or currently have book deals.Justice Jackson joins Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas in publishing moving accounts of their childhoods and paths to the court. Justice Sotomayor has also written several children’s books.Justice Neil M. Gorsuch has focused on the law, publishing books describing the ethical and legal issues raised by assisted suicide and euthanasia. His most recent, published this summer, is a series of stories drawn from court cases that he uses to argue that administrative overreach and the increasing number of laws have harmed ordinary Americans.Two of the newest justices — Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh — have book deals in place. Justice Barrett’s book has been described as her views about keeping personal feelings out of judicial rulings. Justice Kavanaugh’s is expected to be a legal memoir that is likely to touch on his bruising confirmation fight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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San Diego School Superintendent Is Fired After Misconduct Investigation
Lamont Jackson, who led California’s second-largest school district, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” toward two female employees, the investigation found.The superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District was fired on Friday after an investigation had found that he had acted inappropriately toward two female employees, district officials said.Lamont Jackson, who had overseen California’s second-largest school district since 2021, engaged in “unwelcome, sex-based behavior” with two former district management employees, an outside investigation commissioned by the district found. The termination took effect immediately, and the deputy superintendent, Fabiola Bagula, stepped in to lead the district, which has about 115,000 students.Dr. Jackson, 54, could not immediately be reached for comment.Dr. Jackson, who worked for San Diego Unified for more than three decades, became interim superintendent in 2021 after the district’s former head, Cindy Marten, was appointed as U.S. deputy secretary of education by President Biden. The following year, the school board unanimously voted to award Dr. Jackson a four-year contract in the role. In a statement at the time, the board said that Dr. Jackson, a San Diego native, had brought “the experience and leadership skills to the district that our students, staff and community deserve.” The San Diego Union-Tribune also reported that year that principals praised him for how much he cares about his students and staff members.The allegations against Dr. Jackson came to light this past April, and the school district hired the Los Angeles-based law firm Sanchez & Amador to look into them. The two employees, who were not named, were fired in 2023, in what they believed was retaliation for rebuffing Dr. Jackson’s advances.The four-month investigation confirmed that Dr. Jackson had engaged in sexual behavior toward the women but did not find that they were terminated for turning him down, according to documents shared with The Times. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Democratic House Candidate Cleared in New York Harassment Inquiry
The findings may help the candidate, State Senator John Mannion, in his bid to unseat Representative Brandon Williams in a tossup race.For more than two months, the congressional campaign of John Mannion, perhaps Democrats’ best hope to flip a crucial House seat, has been shadowed by accusations that he created a hostile work environment and berated top aides in the New York State Senate.Now an outside investigation commissioned by the State Senate has ended quietly without reprimand, concluding that Mr. Mannion did not violate the chamber’s harassment and discrimination policy.The conclusion, which can still be appealed, would provide significant relief to Democrats. They are counting on Mr. Mannion, a moderate former teacher, to provide one of the four pickups they need nationwide to take back control of the House. He is facing Representative Brandon Williams, a first-term Republican, in November in a district where Democrats meaningfully outnumber Republicans.The investigation was conducted by Michael Murphy, an outside lawyer hired by the Senate, who completed “a detailed, confidential response” and transmitted his findings clearing the Democrat to the Senate on Aug. 16, according to a previously unreported letter addressed to Mr. Mannion and obtained by The New York Times.Still, the letter was terse and provided little detail about whether Mr. Murphy, a partner at the law firm Barclay Damon, found the accusations to be credible when he interviewed several of the state senator’s former staff members.Neither Mr. Mannion nor Mr. Murphy would comment on the investigation or share a copy of the report on Thursday. A spokesman for the State Senate Democrats declined to comment.The accusations first surfaced in June when a group of former aides published an anonymous letter on Medium accusing Mr. Mannion of a litany of abuses and mistreatment during his brief tenure in the State Senate. The authors wrote that they had been subjected to “out of control yelling” and, in one case, retaliation after reporting that they witnessed a co-worker sexually harass a constituent.“We have come together now to write this letter because there is still time to avoid elevating yet another abuser to high office,” they wrote.Mr. Mannion has denied any wrongdoing. His allies privately dismissed the letter, which was published before a Democratic primary, as a politically motivated smear. Mr. Mannion won the primary anyway. More
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Congress Presses Health Insurance Regulators on ‘Troubling’ Billing Tactics
Lawmakers are zeroing in on MultiPlan, a firm that has helped insurers cut payments while sometimes leaving patients with large bills.Lawmakers on Tuesday called on health insurance regulators to detail their efforts against “troubling practices” that have raised costs for patients and employers.In a letter to a top Labor Department official, two congressmen cited a New York Times investigation of MultiPlan, a data firm that works with insurance companies to recommend payments for medical care.The firm and the insurers can collect higher fees when payments to medical providers are lower, but patients can be stuck with large bills, the investigation found. At the same time, employers can be charged high fees — in some cases paying insurers and MultiPlan more for processing a claim than the doctor gets for treating the patient.The lawmakers, Representatives Bobby Scott of Virginia and Mark DeSaulnier of California, both Democrats in leadership positions on a House committee overseeing employer-based insurance, highlighted MultiPlan as an example of “opaque fee structures and alleged self-dealing” that drive up health care costs. In their letter, they pressed the department for details on its efforts to enforce rules meant to promote transparency and expose conflicts of interest.MultiPlan’s business model focuses on the most common way Americans get health coverage: through an employer that “self-funds,” meaning it pays medical claims with its own money and uses an insurance company to process claims. Insurers such as Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare have pitched MultiPlan’s services as a way to save money when an employee sees a provider out of network.In many cases, MultiPlan uses an algorithm-based tool to generate a recommended payment. Employers typically pay insurers and MultiPlan a percentage of what they call the “savings” — the difference between the recommendation and the original bill.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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George Santos Is Expected to Plead Guilty, People Close to Case Say
Mr. Santos could change his mind, but witnesses in his campaign fraud case were told by federal prosecutors that he intends to plead guilty on Monday.George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York undone by a mind-bending array of biographical lies and moneymaking schemes, has told prosecutors that he intends to plead guilty and avoid a federal trial that was expected to begin next month, according to two lawyers involved in the case and two other people with knowledge of the matter.The plea, which is expected to occur on Monday in Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., would spare Mr. Santos from a trial that almost certainly would have been a colorful spectacle. Mr. Santos, whose trial on 23 felony charges was scheduled to begin on Sept. 9, could still change his mind. But this week, two lawyers representing multiple witnesses in the case were told by federal prosecutors that Mr. Santos had decided to plead guilty.Two others with knowledge of the plans confirmed that he intends to plead guilty on Monday; one of the people said Mr. Santos is expected to give a statement in court acknowledging his crimes. The terms of his expected guilty plea and what sentence he might face were not clear.Lies, Charges and Questions Left in the George Santos ScandalGeorge Santos, who was expelled from Congress in 2023, has told so many stories they can be hard to keep straight. We cataloged them, including major questions about his personal finances and his campaign fund-raising and spending.Public court records show that an in-person hearing has been scheduled for Monday afternoon at the request of prosecutors and Mr. Santos’s lawyers. The records did not explain the purpose of the hearing. Mr. Santos and one of his lawyers, Joseph Murray, did not respond to requests for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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Trucking Company Owner Pleads Guilty in Wreck That Killed 7 Bikers
Dunyadar Gasanov admitted he had lied to investigators about how long he had known the driver of the truck and altered drivers’ logs to evade federal regulations.The owner of a trucking company pleaded guilty to federal charges Tuesday for making false statements after one of the company’s trucks killed seven motorcyclists on a rural road in Randolph, N.H. in 2019, federal prosecutors said.Dunyadar Gasanov, the owner of Westfield Transport in West Springfield, Mass., falsified driving logs, conspired to make false statements to federal inspectors and admitted to lying to inspectors about how long he had known the driver involved in the fatal crash, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts said in a statement.Mr. Gasanov, 39, who lives in West Springfield, Mass., and is known as Damien, will face up to 15 years in prison and a $30,000 fine for the three charges to which he pleaded guilty when he is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 21, 2024. As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed to recommend “incarceration at the low end” of the sentencing guidelines, according to court documents.In a statement, Joshua S. Levy, the acting U.S. attorney, said that Mr. Gasanov had “flouted those laws that are critical to public safety.”“We will not forget the lives lost in June 2019 that relate to this conviction,” he said.The crash, on June 21, 2019, killed seven members of a motorcycle club of ex-Marines: Albert (Woody) Mazza Jr., 59; Daniel Pereira, 58; Aaron Perry, 45; Desma Oakes, 42; Michael Ferazzi, 62; and Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, who were 58.The driver of the truck that killed the bikers, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, of West Springfield, Mass., was acquitted by a jury in 2022 of all charges he faced: seven counts of manslaughter, seven counts of negligent homicide and one count of reckless conduct.Mr. Gasanov lied to investigators about how many times he had interacted with Mr. Zhukovskyy, prosecutors said. He had claimed that he had first met the driver shortly before the crash, when, in fact, he had known him for years and was aware that Mr. Zhukovskyy, in 2013, had been charged with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, according to court records.Mr. Gasanov also underreported the number of hours driven by employees to evade federal regulations designed to ensure the safety of roadways, instructed at least one employee to falsify records, and lied about manipulation of driving logs, according to prosecutors.Westfield Transport ceased operation shortly after the accident, according to court records.Lawyers for Mr. Gasanov did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Dartanayan Gasanov, who, according to The Boston Globe is a brother of Dunyadar Gasanov, worked at Westfield Transport with Dunyadar, has also been accused of falsifying driving logs. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial, the prosecutors’ statement said.Kirsten Noyes More
