New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign provided records last month to address more than $2 million in financial discrepancies flagged in an audit of its operations, but his team also left a number of suspected violations unresolved, including a question about payments to two top aides, the Daily News has learned.
First disclosed in August, the Campaign Finance Board’s draft audit of Adams’ 2021 operation found his team failed to properly document $2.3 million it spent during that year’s election cycle using public matching funds.
That bookkeeping lapse was among 22 categories of potential violations the CFB asked Adams’ team to address in a formal response, the final step in the process before the board said it would move to consider fines.
In a response dated Nov. 29, obtained this week by the Daily News via a Freedom of Information Law request, Adams’ campaign wrote it had submitted disclosure amendments and other records that would make most of the $2.3 million qualify under the board’s documentation rules.
The records themselves weren’t released, as Adams’ campaign wrote it had submitted them in the CFB’s internal bookkeeping database, which isn’t subject to FOIL requests. The campaign did include a spreadsheet of transactions it said it had furnished corrected information for, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in TV ad spending.
That spreadsheet did not, however, list two matching funds-bankrolled transactions the CFB’s original draft audit flagged as being improperly documented: A $35,000 consulting payment to Brianna Suggs, Adams’ longtime fundraiser, in October 2021, and a $26,000 wage payment to Ingrid Lewis-Martin, his chief adviser, in September 2021. It’s unclear why the campaign did not supply additional documentation for those payments.
Both Lewis-Martin and Suggs have recently faced scrutiny from law enforcement.
Lewis-Martin resigned from her City Hall job this past Sunday and says she expects to be indicted on unspecified corruption charges this week by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Suggs’ Brooklyn home was raided in November 2023 by federal authorities as part of the investigation into Turkish government ties that resulted in Adams’ indictment this September on corruption charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Beyond efforts to account for the $2.3 million in undocumented spending, the records obtained by the Daily News show Adams’ campaign did not offer any explanations for six categories of suspected violations flagged by the CFB in the draft audit.
Those categories include findings by the CFB that the mayor’s team received tens of thousands of dollars in unreported “in-kind contributions” and “prohibited contributions” from corporate entities, the records show. Most of the flagged undisclosed in-kind contributions relate to fundraising events Adams’ campaign didn’t charge anyone for hosting, the draft audit shows.
The documents also show Adams’ campaign did not respond to a finding that his team failed to disclose “intermediaries” — individuals who bundle contributions to political candidates — for dozens of sets of donations to his 2021 run totaling more than $206,000.
Among those donation sets were several that have emerged in connection with Adams’ criminal case, including a grouping of 10 contributions made by employees of KSK Construction, a Brooklyn company owned by Turkish nationals. The KSK donations are referenced in Adams’ indictment as being among illegal contributions he allegedly solicited from Turkish government operatives.
Additionally, the campaign wrote it “has no response at this time” to a seventh suspected violation category related to daily pre-election donation disclosures, and said it is still “working to resolve this issue” in response to an eighth category entitled “credits through Dec. 31, 2023.”
Vito Pitta, Adams’ campaign attorney, didn’t comment about specifics in the draft audit response, but blamed the shortage of explanations on the mayor’s pending criminal case.
“Given the ongoing trial, the campaign was not able to respond to a number of findings,” he said in an email late Tuesday night. “In an effort to cooperate as fully as possible in the post-election audit and not delay the process by seeking another extension, the campaign provided a partial response.”
Adams’ campaign was initially supposed to submit its audit response by July 1, but didn’t file it until last month after securing multiple extensions.
A CFB spokesman declined to comment Tuesday beyond referring to the board’s penalty guidelines; the board can levy fines ranging in the hundreds of thousands of dollars against campaigns that don’t respond or provide insufficient answers to draft audit reports.
The Adams campaign’s audit response comes at a politically delicate time for the mayor.
On Monday, the CFB denied Adams nearly $4 million in public matching funds for his 2025 reelection run, citing “all available information,” including the mayor’s indictment, which alleges he solicited bribes and illegal donations for both his 2021 and 2025 campaigns, mostly from Turkish government operatives, in exchange for political favors. Adams is expected to stand trial in April on those charges.
A suspected violation category Adams’ team did offer an explanation for in last month’s CFB response involved an expense topping $7,000 the campaign incurred for car repairs at a Brooklyn shop, the records show. The CFB had questioned whether that was an appropriate campaign expense, and Adams’ team wrote the costs were “permissible” because they covered repairs on two rental cars Adams used on the 2021 campaign trail.
“The vehicles were used for campaign purposes, and the length of each rental resulted in damage to the vehicle above what would typically occur in a short-term rental,” the campaign wrote.
The response didn’t say what type of damage the cars sustained.
Joanna Zdanys, an attorney specializing in city campaign finance law and the deputy director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said penalties for intermediary reporting violations alone “can certainly add up” as the CFB assess fines for each undisclosed bundler.
Zdanys said fines can be compounded for campaigns that avoid addressing suspected violations altogether.
“The CFB does have a history of taking failures to respond to draft audit reports seriously,” she said.
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