U.S. prosecutors on Thursday charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams with accepting illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him, capping an investigation that has sent the largest U.S. city’s government into turmoil

In a 57-page indictment, prosecutors laid out an alleged scheme stretching back to 2014 that helped to underwrite Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign and showered him with free rooms at opulent hotels and meals at high-end restaurants.

In return, Adams pressured city officials to allow the country’s new 36-story consulate to open despite safety concerns, prosecutors said.

The Democrat faces five criminal charges and could face decades in prison if found guilty.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been charged with bribery and fraud following a spiraling federal investigation into his administration.

Among other accusations, federal prosecutors alleged in their September 2024 indictment that Adams received campaign donations from the Turkish government for his 2021 mayoral race and sought to conceal these illegal foreign contributions.

Adams is New York’s first mayor to be charged with a crime, but he is hardly the only politician to run afoul of rules that govern how political campaigns can raise and spend funds in U.S. elections.

And as we document in our new podcast, “Scandalized,” discovering campaign finance violations is often just the first chapter in a much wilder story.

Why campaign finance law matters
The U.S. has federal rules that govern how political campaigns can raise and spend money in U.S. elections. For example, they limit how much money individuals and groups can contribute to candidates’ campaigns. Federal rules also restrict how campaign funds may be used and require the disclosure of all campaign expenditures, ensuring candidates can’t spend campaign money on whatever they want.

Legally, candidates may use campaign donations on expenses directly related to their race for office. Allowable expenditures include advertising, travel and costs related to fundraising, such as renting an event space or buying food for guests. Candidates may use excess campaign funds after the election is over to pay down outstanding loans, or they can transfer it to other campaigns or party organizations.

Campaign funds may not, however, be spent at any time on purely personal expenses. Candidates cannot pay their mortgage or rent out of their election war chest, or purchase clothing or household supplies.

The disgraced former U.S. Rep. George Santos, a Republican from New York, was a particularly egregious violator of the rules related to personal expenses.

Santos pleaded guilty in August 2024 to nearly two dozen counts of campaign finance violations – a smorgasbord of crimes. According to The New York Times, he rerouted “tens of thousands of dollars of campaign money toward personal expenses, including luxury goods, Atlantic City casinos, rent payments and a website primarily known for explicit sexual content.”

Santos, who served for just under a year until he was expelled from Congress in December 2023, is a prime example of how the complicated U.S. campaign finance system can unearth other, even more scandalous actions by politicians.

A window into bigger scandals
A key element of campaign finance law is disclosure. Candidates must publicly report donations over US$200, for example, and document everything they spend those donations on during and after their campaigns.

For former U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., a California Republican, failure to comply with disclosure laws during his 2016 election campaign resulted in a federal investigation. The Justice Department found that Hunter used campaign donations to fund family vacations, video game purchases and hotel rooms for multiple extramarital affairs. In 2020, he was sentenced to 11 months in prison.

Former President Donald Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, also failed to disclose a contribution to his boss’s 2016 presidential campaign. But the real scandal was what that money actually went for: paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making an unlawful contribution.

Many, if not most, campaign finance violations are minor. Small mistakes such as filing a late donor disclosure report or miscategorizing an expense usually incur little more than a small fine.

When technical campaign finance violations shed light on a big scandal, however, they attract attention. Voters and the media latch onto the fact that not only are donors’ funds not going where they intended, but in many cases the money has been spent to subsidize candidates’ personal misbehavior and corrupt activity.

High-profile political scandals erode the public trust
Just about every recent survey shows Americans’ levels of faith and trust in government at historic lows. In the 1960s, three-quarters of voters said they trusted the government to do the right thing most or all of the time. Today, only one-fifth do.

Unseemly behavior by politicians, including by candidates who misspend their supporters’ donations, may contribute to this declining trust. Americans have real fears about money in politics. For example, 84% of Americans worry that wealthy lobbyists and interest groups have undue influence on elections, and 80% say campaign donations have corrupting effects on politicians.

Even when candidates aren’t technically breaking the law, they often use campaign funds in ways donors may not realize – or appreciate.

Sometimes, investigations into seemingly technical campaign violations uncover a wilder story. Filo via Getty
In the 2024 election, for example, political campaigns, both major parties and private fundraising entities on both sides of the aisle have spent millions in campaign funds on the legal fees of candidates fighting court battles over allegations of serious criminal misconduct.

Beneficiaries include Trump, who has been indicted for suspected mishandling of classified documents, and New Jersey’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Mendendez, who was recently convicted on federal corruption charges.

The bottom line: Donations made to help a candidate win their race are not always going where donors actually intended or believed they would.

Still, the U.S. political climate is so polarized that these scandals may not dramatically affect voters’ decision-making. Political scientists sometimes refer to today’s voters as “calcified” in their partisan identities, meaning they are so loyal to their own party that campaign-finance violations and other scandals cannot change their views much.

Research shows voters are also increasingly motivated not so much by their support or affection for their own party but rather by their fear and loathing of the other party. As a result, partisan voters are willing to accept or forgive scandalous behavior from their own side in the interest of beating the opposition. Hardcore partisans are also adept at finding ways to justify or rationalize these transgressions.

With record amounts of money flowing in and out of political campaigns in 2024, the coming months are bound to bring more campaign finance scandals. But our research indicates they are unlikely to have major effects at the polling station.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing federal charges of bribery, fraud and soliciting a political contribution from a foreign national, according to an indictment that was unsealed on Thursday — a historic circumstance that comes after a monthslong investigation.

Early Thursday, federal agents descended upon the mayor’s official residence, Gracie Mansion, member station Gothamist reported, citing law enforcement.

After the indictment was unsealed, Adams maintained his innocence, saying at an outdoor news conference that his legal team would “peruse the entire document.”

Announcing the Substack Election Dialogues, featuring Nate Silver, Matthew Yglesias, Joyce Vance, Matt Taibbi, and more

Participants were asked to select topics for discussion that they find intellectually challenging, and to focus on issues that are yet unresolved in their minds as they approach the ballots. They may have simpatico views with their interlocutors on the whole, but on these issues, their opinions may differ in a nuanced enough way to create the right conditions for advancing their own thinking.

Thirty nine days until the election. Kamala Harris is at the border today. Donald Trump is meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. There are more polls being released than any person can keep track of.

What better way to sort through the week that was and look forward to the week to come than through your questions?

Helene Makes Landfall as Category 4, Weather.com
Hurricane Helene weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, causing tornadoes, flooding, outages, and at least three fatalities in Florida and Georgia.

Netanyahu Remains Defiant, Associated Press
Netanyahu vowed to continue full-force strikes against Hezbollah, rejecting cease-fire proposals as fighting escalates and displaces tens of thousands with hundreds of casualties.

Ryan: I Debated JD Vance, Smerconish.com
Ahead of the 1st VP debate, Tim Ryan reflects on his debates with JD Vance, predicting that Vance will rely on a usual strategy of dodging direct answers while pushing fear-based narratives.

Jensen: I Debated Tim Walz, Smerconish.com
Dr. Jensen draws on his own experience from three gubernatorial debates with Tim Walz, warning that Walz’s evasive political tactics may once again take center stage on October 1st.

Jack Smith Takes His Final Shot, Politico
Special Counsel Jack Smith will submit a 180-page dossier to Judge Tanya Chutkan on Trump’s alleged 2020 election interference, with its release possibly impacting the 2024 race.

Report: CNN Paywall Coming Soon, DNYUZ
In October, CNN will introduce a metered paywall, charging frequent readers to boost revenue amid declining cable viewership, one of the first major initiatives under CEO Mark Thompson.

Ground News

NC Removes 747K From Voter Rolls, For the Left
North Carolina’s State Board of Elections removed 747,000 ineligible voters over 20 months due to address changes, deaths, felony convictions, and lack of participation.

Anti-Trans Laws Linked to Suicides, For the Right
A study links anti-transgender legislation to significant increases in suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary youths, rising 7-72% after the laws’ enactment.

The AI Unicorns Landscape: Arrival of a New “AI Economy” Klarna, change and the great investment.

Is Generative AI going to lead to a new economy? This is one of the biggest questions we’ve had since late 2022. Ollie is based in Bangkok Thailand and I am currently in Taiwan. No matter where you live there is a sense that the world is changing and AI may be accelerating the pace of change.

Generative AI is poised to significantly impact the global economy, potentially leading to what could be considered a ‘new economy.’ This article will focus on the landscape of AI unicorns poised to usher in a new economy on the back of new capabilities, an emerging agentic AI and text-to-action based economy.

Vice President Kamala Harris will make a trip to the southern border today, the first time she has been to the border since 2021 and a sign that her campaign knows she has a problem on immigration.

Harris isn’t expected to announce any major new policy ground on the trip. According to Politico, she will call for enforcement of existing laws, more resources for border patrol agents and fentanyl detecting machines.

Remember that the most precious commodity in a campaign is the candidate’s time. Which means every single place a candidate goes this close to the election is with a specific purpose.

The most notable thing about the leaked dossier is what was left out of it

Cat’s Out of the Bag
—Marc A. Caputo

The opposition-research dossier put together by the Trump campaign on JD Vance—and allegedly stolen from them by foreign hackers—was published on Thursday by journalist Ken Klippenstein on his Substack.

And what stands out is not what’s in the 271-page file, but what was left out.

Vance’s infamous “childless cat ladies” comment was not listed among the liabilities that the Trump campaign assessed about the then-prospective running mate.