Trump says he will consider pardoning Eric Adams as New York City agency bars mayor from lucrative matching funds program

(CNN) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams was dealt a pair of dire political blows on Monday, even as a potential legal lifeline emerged when President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider pardoning Adams if the mayor was convicted in his coming federal corruption trial.

Trump, during a news conference in Florida, said he believed Adams had been “treated pretty unfairly” by prosecutors and promised to “look at” the case – and a potential pardon. His remarks came shortly after a city agency denied Adams’ reelection campaign millions of dollars in public matching funds and just before the mayor’s top adviser, who abruptly resigned on Sunday, said she expects to be charged this week.

In September, federal prosecutors indicted Adams, who is up for reelection next year, on charges of bribery, corruption, wire fraud and soliciting and accepting donations from foreign nationals. He pleaded not guilty and has denied any wrongdoing.

The first-term mayor also is facing a swarm of Democratic primary challengers and, with the city’s Campaign Finance Board cutting him off from matching funds valued at more than $4 million, will find it nearly impossible to compete on the fundraising front.

“There is reason to believe the Adams campaign has engaged in conduct detrimental to the matching funds program in violation of law including the campaign finance act and board rules,” said Frederick Schaffer, the board chair, during a public meeting on Monday. The independent agency controls the program that offers candidates an 8-to-1 match of small-dollar donations.

Vito Pitta, the mayor’s political counsel, said in a statement that the campaign would keep attempting to access the taxpayer-funded program and that “the mayor’s campaign continues to have far more resources than his opponents.”

Adams, who has lost nearly his entire inner circle during the course of the scandal, will also be without close aide and confidant Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who announced her departure from his office over the weekend and, in a news conference of her own on Monday, said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is poised to indict her in the coming days.

“I am being falsely accused,” Lewis-Martin said at her lawyer Arthur Aidala’s Midtown office. “I’ve worked in government for over 35 years. … I have never taken any gifts, money, anything.”

Lewis-Martin has been under investigation at least since September, when investigators from the district attorney’s office seized her phones at John F. Kennedy International Airport as she and a group of colleagues and friends were returning from a vacation to Japan. The inquiry has examined possible bribery and money laundering in the city’s leasing of commercial properties, several people told CNN.

A possible pardon

Adams has frequently suggested that his prosecution is politically motivated payback from the Biden administration over his criticism of the president’s handling of the border and a migrant crisis that’s drained city coffers. He made the claim again in an interview with talk show host Phil McGraw set to air on Monday night.

“The tip of it is I was extremely vociferous about what was happening to this city during the migrants and asylum seeker issue,” Adams told McGraw, who asked him why a grand jury voted to indict him. McGraw has refashioned himself as a border hawk and spoke glowingly of Donald Trump at the then-candidate’s October rally at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Adams’ reticence to publicly back Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the final stretch of the presidential campaign and his increasingly warm response to Trump’s election, including a meeting last week with the president-elect’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has fanned rumors that the mayor is angling for a pardon.

“No American should go through what I’m going through. No American should go through it,” Adams told McGraw, echoing Trump’s past rhetoric about his own legal troubles. “The only consolation to this is that mommy’s not alive. I would not want my mother to watch me go through this. It hurts a lot.”

This is not the first time Trump has addressed the case against Adams. At a pre-election charity event in New York, Trump wished Adams “good luck” and expressed confidence he would be exonerated.

“I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders,” Trump said. “We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric.”

Asked on Monday if he would consider pardoning Adams, Trump said, “Yeah, I would.”

“I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump said. “Now, I haven’t seen the gravity of it all, but it seems, you know, like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago… I know probably everybody here has been upgraded.”

Adams has been accused by federal prosecutors of accepting thousands of dollars in travel perks from Turkish officials, including flight upgrades on Turkish Airlines. The mayor was also charged with soliciting and accepting straw donations for his 2021 and 2025 campaigns.

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for all of you, that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams told reporters in late September, claiming without evidence that his criticism of Biden made him a target for the Justice Department.

Adams’ decision to retain attorney Alex Spiro, a longtime counsel to Trump-ally Elon Musk, has also fueled speculation that the mayor is intent on winning favor with the president-elect.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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