NYC Mayor Eric Adams seeks dismissal of bribery charge brought by ‘zealous’ prosecutors
Eric Adams, mayor of New York, exits federal court after his arraignment in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. — Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The bribery charge against New York Mayor Eric Adams is “extraordinarily vague” and brought by “zealous prosecutors” who spent years “casting about” for something to support a criminal case against the mayor, a defense attorney said Monday in a new court filing.
Federal prosecutors accused Adams of accepting more than $100,000 in airline upgrades and luxury hotel stays from Turkey and, in 2021, when a Turkish official told Adams it was “his turn,” Adams allegedly pressured the New York City Fire Department to rush a safety inspection of the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan.
Adams was arraigned on the charges on Friday. He pleaded not guilty one day after the indictment was unsealed.
The mayor’s attorney, Alex Spiro, argued on Monday that the alleged scheme “does not meet the definition of bribery” because the indictment does not say Adams agreed to perform any official act in exchange for the travel perks.
“Rather, it alleges only that while serving as Brooklyn Borough President — not Mayor or even Mayor-elect — he agreed generally to assist with the ‘operation’ or ‘regulation’ of a Turkish Consulate building in Manhattan, where he had no authority whatsoever,” Spiro wrote in a motion to dismiss the bribery count.
The defense suggested what Adams is accused of doing is routine, not criminal.
“That extraordinarily vague allegation encompasses a wide array of normal and perfectly lawful acts that any City official would undertake for the consulate of important foreign nation,” the motion said. “The three innocuous messages Adams allegedly sent to the Fire Commissioner here fall far short of the kind official act necessary for bribery.”
Adams has pleaded not guilty to all five counts he faces. He is due back in court on Wednesday.
Spiro said the other four counts should also be dismissed.
(NEW YORK) — Another dazzling display of the wonders of outer space will be visible from Earth in the coming days.
The annual Orionid meteor shower, which originates from Halley’s Comet, is expected light up the night sky starting this weekend.
Considered by NASA as “one of the most beautiful showers of the year,” the Orionids are the latest astronomical event this month, which already has included a strong solar storm that led to widespread northern lights, the Tsuchinshan-Atlas comet, and the brightest supermoon of the year.
“There’s been a lot of great celestial events this year alone,” Shawn Dahl, coordinator for NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told ABC News, describing them as “a lot of glorious things to see in the sky.”
The Orionid meteor shower is produced every year when Earth passes through the debris – composed of ice and dust – left behind by Halley’s Comet, according to NASA.
When the debris trail intersects Earth’s atmosphere, the debris disintegrates and creates streaks in the sky, according to NASA.
The intensity of the peak activity tends to vary, but they are “much higher than usual” this year, Elizabeth Macdonald, a space physicist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told ABC News.
In a normal year, the Orionids produce 10 to 20 showers per hour, but during exceptional years, such as 2006 to 2009, the peak rates were on par with the Perseids, at about 50 to 75 per hour, according to the American Meteorological Society (AMS).
The Orionids can be seen from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres without a telescope, according to NASA. In the Northern Hemisphere, face southeast, and if in the Southern hemisphere, face northeast.
However, the light from the supermoon, which began to wane on Friday, is expected to limit a lot of visibility, Macdonald said.
“The moon is going to bleach out a lot of meteors,” she said.
But even with the full moon, “relatively bright” meteors from Orionid tend to streak across the sky, said Dahl, who does backyard astronomy as a hobby.
Traveling to the darkest spot possible will likely increase the chances of seeing the shower, Macdonald said. It is also important for stargazers to keep their eyes dark-adapted in order to see the meteors, which includes avoiding constant interaction with the bright screen of a cell phone, Dahl said.
“In less than 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors,” NASA advised. “Be patient – the show will last until dawn, so you have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.”
Awareness of the direction to look toward is important as well, Dahl said. The meteors tend to be “pointing back” as they’re streaking through the sky, so looking toward the radiant in the sky – that is, the point where the paths of meteors appear to meet – will increase the chances of seeing them, Dahl said.
“You have to be kind of know the general area of the sky to look,” Dahl said. “That’s why [meteors] have a name.”
The radiant of meteors is the constellation from which they appear to originate, according to NASA. For the Orionids, the radiant is the constellation Orion.
But it is not necessary to only look toward the radiant, as the Orionids are visible across the night sky, according to NASA, which advised viewing the Orionids from 45 to 90 degrees away from the radiant.
The Orionids tend to peak during mid-October every year, according to NASA, with the hours after midnight typically the best viewing times.
The meteor shower is expected to peak on Sunday and Monday, at which point the moon will be 83% full, according to the AMS.
The best time to see the meteor shower will probably be Monday night, once the supermoon has waned, Macdonald said.
(NEW YORK) — Colleges and universities are seeing mixed results in the diversity of their incoming freshman classes after the Supreme Court set new limits on the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
For example, the Yale University class of 2028 saw no difference from the class of 2027 when it came to the percentage of African American students and Native American students. The Hispanic/Latino and International student populations remained roughly the same, dropping and rising, respectively, by 1%. However, the Asian American population dropped by 6%, the white population rose by 4%.
When comparing Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s class of 2027 to 2028, the Black population dropped from 15% to 5%, the Hispanic/Latino population dropped from 16% to 11%, and the white population decreased by 1%.
The Asian American population increased from 40% to 47% and both the American Indian/Alaskan Native and international populations increased by 1%.
Affirmative action policies allowed institutions to take into account an individual student’s race or ethnicity as one factor of many during the college admissions selection process. It rose to popularity in the 1960s to address racial inequities in access to higher education.
Researchers previously told ABC News that societal injustices – such as economic inequality, segregation and academic inequity in K-12 schools – as well as the lasting impact of historical exclusion from colleges and universities against Black and brown students have led to the continued underrepresentation in four-year institutions.
A landmark Supreme Court ruling in 1978 – in the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke – cemented affirmative action policies in college and university admissions for decades and led to an increase in diversity on campuses.
However, the 2023 decision by the Supreme Court sided in part with Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group that challenged race-related admissions policies. Members argued that the affirmative action policies at the schools were discriminatory against white and Asian students.
Now, as a new class of students head back to campus, many are looking at how schools might feel the impact of the required policy change.
Here’s a look at the difference in student diversity at several other institutions that have published their class breakdown:
Princeton University saw a decrease in its Asian population and International incoming populations, both of which dropped by about 2%. The Black or African American incoming population saw a .1% dip, and the Hispanic/Latino population saw a 1% dip.
However, at least 7.7% of the class’ racial or ethnic identity is unknown. Princeton did not publish the percentage of white students in its class of 2027, but noted that 31.3% of students in the class of 2028 are white.
Amherst College in Massachusetts reported larger drops in the Black and Latinx incoming student population. The incoming Black student population decreased from 19% to 9% and the Latinx population decreased from 14% to 10%, the American Indian or Alaska Native incoming population dropped by 1%.
The percentage of white students rose by 2% and the Asian student percentage increased by 1%.
(WASHINGTON) — Special counsel Jack Smith is in active talks with senior leadership at the Justice Department evaluating ways he can end his prosecutions of President-elect Donald Trump, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The decision is based on longstanding Department of Justice policy that a sitting president cannot face criminal prosecution while in office, sources said.
It is unclear as of today how Smith’s prosecutors will approach dismissing both the federal election subversion case in Washington, D.C., and their ongoing appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case.
Trump has vowed to fire Smith “within two seconds.”
“We got immunity at the Supreme Court. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump said on a call into the “Hugh Hewitt Show” on Oct. 24.
But due to Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a president, a firing is unneeded.
Smith was appointed to his position by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election as well as Trump’s alleged unlawful possession of highly classified documents he took from his time in the White House.
On June 8, 2023, Smith indicted Trump on charges he unlawfully retained classified documents and obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in a federal court in Florida.
On Aug. 1, 2023, Trump was indicted on four felony counts related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump also pleaded not guilty in federal court to those charges.
Both cases were thrown into disarray by the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this summer giving presidents partial immunity against prosecution.
The Jan. 6 case was sent back to a lower court, while Cannon, a Trump nominee, dismissed the classified documents case, ruling Smith’s appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional because he was not appointed by the president or confirmed by Congress.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
