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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Tomorrow night we're going to have an election special. I will be back at eight o'clock tomorrow night. Yes, it is Election Day. One of the things that we'll touch on is how some results of tomorrow's elections around here, could affect Mayor Adams' bid for re-election in 2025. The latest article on Gothamist, by our Liz Kim, who leads our coverage of the Adams administration, is called 2025 starts today': An FBI inquiry into Mayor Adams' campaign complicates reelection bid. No further introduction needed on that. Let's just bring Liz Kim on and talk it through. Hi, Liz. Welcome back to the show.

Liz Kim: Brian, good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the news that FBI agents raided the home of a key Mayor Adams's fundraiser on Thursday. People have been hearing this story, but it's kind of confusing. Let's start at the beginning. Who's this fundraiser? Why did the FBI raid her home?

Liz Kim: The fundraiser is Brianna Suggs. She's the chief contact for the campaign for donors. She organizes the events and she's also part of the mayor's inner circle. Now what a lot of people have focused on is the fact that she's only 25 years old. She started out as an intern for Adams when he was the Brooklyn Borough President. She reported to Deputy Borough President Ingrid Lewis-Martin. Now, she is one of Adams' closest confidants who's now his chief adviser. That's also what makes her so close to Adams, is that she's close to Adams' confidants and she has a direct line to the mayor.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. There's some kind of possible connection to the Government of Turkey, which both raises people's eyebrows and confuses them even more. What's that about?

Liz Kim: Yes. I should start out by saying that a lot of what we know about the investigation is from The Times because they obtained a copy of a portion of the warrant. What they're reporting is that federal prosecutors are looking at possible illegal donations from Turkish nationals to the campaign. As to why did they raid his chief fundraiser is, they want to look and see, learn more about the donors, and look more at the records. That's basically how Turkey gets involved, and it is very complicated. I think most of us were astonished to see that there was a link to this foreign country, and there was-- The Times even used the word, a possible conspiracy between the Government of Turkey and the campaign.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Liz Kim: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: We know about a Trump [unintelligible 00:03:06] connection and Mayor Adams [unintelligible 00:03:08] connection. It's like the last thing anybody was thinking of. As far as Brianna Suggs is concerned, has she been charged with a crime?

Liz Kim: No. We should be clear about that. She has not been charged with a crime. It's been reported that there is a grand jury convened in Manhattan and that she will be brought in for questioning. The mayor is also not under investigation. We should be clear about that as well.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, now, let me make sure I'm hearing that right. It's not just that the mayor isn't being charged with a crime as this fundraiser is not at least at this point. You're saying, she's under investigation by the FBI, but he's not even under investigation.

Liz Kim: Correct. Correct. It's his campaign. It's his campaign, and it's his inner circle. The mayor has in the wake of this sought to tell the public that he himself has not been contacted by any federal officials or the FBI or prosecutors.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Just to make sure I'm using languages as precisely as it should be used, did I speak accurately when I said she, the fundraiser, is under investigation, because I guess that is correct.

Liz Kim: That's correct. She's obviously under investigation because they raided her home to get-- [chuckles] They brought out documents, but we don't know anything yet, in terms of, is she being charged with any crime? Is it just that she had information that prosecutors want to know more about? A lot of this is developing. Again, because it's a federal investigation, they're not talking publicly to the press.

That's why I want to caution people in saying, what we know is largely something that they've given The New York Times a copy of the search warrant, and it's from that. Then there's also other reporting too, that we've had other outlets like CNN report that there was more than one search done, and there were other homes involved. More is coming out, but there have been no public statements on the record as to what this is.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, who has questions or comments about the FBI raid on Adams' campaign fundraiser or anything related for Liz Kim? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Right around when that raid was happening, Adams was headed to a meeting at the White House. Now you don't cancel the White House meeting lightly, but Adams did turn around and come home without attending that meeting. Here he is on PIX11 yesterday, trying to explain why.

Mayor Adams: I was notified by our team of there's something was taking place with the campaign staffer, and I wanted to be here to make sure that we fully complied. As I always say, anytime there's any type of review, that we're going to fully comply. I have one of the best compliance teams that any campaign has ever put together.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, what more can you tell us about why the mayor felt he needed to personally be present after a raid on one fundraiser's home?

Liz Kim: Well, that's exactly what the mayor was being pressed on because he's saying two things at once. First, he's telling us that he has not been contacted as part of this federal investigation, but yet he also felt the need to be "on the ground", but what could he possibly be doing if he's not being contacted about it? He's not being questioned. That raises the question, why did you feel the need to rush back to the city? Because it's not as if they were asking you to become involved in this investigation. That's why his actions of coming back from a very important meeting, I should say, really raised a lot of eyebrows.

Brian Lehrer: There was a company being named in the reporting here as being investigated in connection with this Adams campaign fundraising. It's called KSK Construction Group of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Why are they being investigated?

Liz Kim: My colleagues on Friday did an in-depth write-up on the construction company. I really encourage all the listeners who are interested in this story to go to Gothamist and read it. They basically lay out the history of this company. Yes, they're being investigated for potential, we should always say that, potential involvement in funneling the donations. They are a condo and hotel development group, and they've developed projects basically all over the city.

My colleagues looked at their contributions, and they've contributed nearly $14,000 to the mayor's campaign. Now, what's important is, the city has a very generous matching funds program. It's for every dollar you give in small-dollar donations, it gets multiplied. $1 becomes $8. What my colleagues figured out was that from that--

Brian Lehrer: Just so people know the background there, that's basically a mayoral hopeful, let's say, with regular amounts of money could compete with somebody like Michael Bloomberg, [chuckles] who has an unlimited bank account, this matching program, if you raise $1 in a small dollar donation, it'll be matched $8 times by the city. Go ahead.

Liz Kim: Correct. That's where potential misconduct can arise because if the city is going to match it, it needs to vet those donations, they have to be from qualified donors that are from the city. That leads to the possibility of what's known as straw donors. Straw donors are essentially people who give who are given money to give to the campaign, but in their name only, and they become a way in which people can circumvent contribution limits, and also take advantage of this very generous matching program and that's a crime.

Brian Lehrer: To say what this might be, somebody in the Government of Turkey, wants to give the mayor's campaign, a whole lot of money and the way they can do it to get-- but each donation really has to be small in order to qualify for the matching funds. They enlist a lot of people who have no particular interest in the campaign to each give that little bit of money. Those are the so-called straw donors, and that's illegal.

Liz Kim: That's correct, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Does Turkey have a particular interest in city policy that anybody can ascertain? Do they want the Turkish consulate exempt from congestion pricing, or I don't know what it is? Is there anything that anybody's speculating on?

Liz Kim: I guess that was one of the questions, and that's why it's puzzling. Why would Turkish nationals be interested in funneling money to the mayor of the city of New York? I think you could speculate, maybe, on what the possible connections are, but for now, we really don't know. What's interesting is that Mayor Adams has been to Turkey several times. He was at a press conference for a flag-raising for Turkey recently, in which he touted that. He says, "I've been to Turkey five or six times.

Again, I think the mayor, even as Brooklyn borough president, he really liked to travel a lot. He thought that that was important because the city is a global city. It represents people from around the world. He wants to get to know their cultures better. This is basically part of who the mayor is, I should say. It's not just that he goes to Turkey a lot, but he does believe in traveling as the mayor of the city of New York.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe there was this straw donor scheme which was being worked through this Brooklyn construction company. In the PIX11 interview yesterday, Adams was asked if he knows or has ever worked with anyone from that company. Here's the question from the host, Dan Mannarino, and you'll hear a long pause listeners before Adams answers. And we actually shortened that pause so our computers don't think we went off the air and we get this freak-out signal in the studio. Listen to this. Again, it starts with PIX11's, Dan Mannarino asking the question.

Dan Dan: Do you know or have ever worked with anybody from the KSK Construction Group?

Adam: Not of my knowledge. I cannot tell you, and I'm glad you said that Dan, how many thousands of people contribute to our campaign. I attend so many different fundraisers, meet so many different people throughout the part of raising funds. I am not familiar with this organization at all. It's one of the many different groups and organizations that contributes to the campaign.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I guess we edited out the whole pause. Liz, how do you interpret that answer and the pause that was there that signals, I guess, some kind of uncertainty on the mayor as to how to answer in the original?

Liz Kim: I think it's fair to say that the mayor and his team they're still trying to figure out how to talk about this issue. For example, when he decided to turn around from Washington, DC, and come back to New York, the statement they gave was so vague. Basically, they said that the mayor is coming back to "deal with a matter." You can't get any more vague than that. They realized that he does have to speak to it. He does submit to this, one televised interview with PIX11, but I think that they still don't know exactly how are they going to address this. He hasn't been in front of reporters a lot over the weekend.

In fact, he normally has a weekly press conference with reporters every Tuesday. We were told that that was canceled. Now we're being told that he's going to hold it on Wednesday. A lot of this just seems like an administration that's trying to buy time, trying to figure out what should the mayor say. I imagine on Wednesday, he will have counsel with him because I think they're very sensitive of how does the mayor talk about. This is very huge news. It was very much a political earthquake for a lot of people. This does not happen every day where the FBI raids the mayor's chief fundraiser's home.

Brian Lehrer: Now, some listeners who are texting us want to know more about Brianna Suggs. One person writes, "Talk about the mysterious wellness check. I think they called it a wellness check that the NYPD did at the girl's house." Well, she's a young woman, she's 25. The texter writes, "at the girl's house before the FBI raid. Were they there to gather up and destroy evidence?" Another asks, "Any thoughts about Suggs' age?"

People, I guess, are wondering that a 25-year-old who couldn't have that much experience have gotten roped into something somehow over her head or that this text says, "Looks like she had a big role in Adams campaign as a teen." What about her in this respect? People are interested in how young she is.

Liz Kim: I'll tackle that question because that interested me too. I've heard different things. Yes, she's very young, and you wonder, wow, how was someone t, whose only 25 years old, she gets to be the chief fundraiser for the mayor? What I would say--

Brian Lehrer: She was the chief fundraiser for the whole campaign in 2021.

Liz Kim: What does that mean exactly? I think, for the lack of a real title, I think people have anointed her as the chief fundraiser. This is what it means. I think we should note that campaigns are full of young people. A lot of times, when you watch these campaigns, it's a lot of people in their 20s. Was it unusual for her to be involved in fundraising in the campaign? No, not at all. Her job, as it was described to me, was that it was very much logistical in the beginning. Basically, they gave her a list. They tell her, "Call the names on the list." They tell her, "We need to have an event, and you need to organize this event."

She does that. Then she's basically learning on the job, and she's doing this during the campaign, and she gets several years under her belt of experience. I think what's important though about her is how she entered the campaign. That's why I emphasize that when she started working for Adams, she was reporting directly to Ingrid Lewis Martin. That's Adams' one of his closest and longtime confidants. That suggests that she's with someone who's very important.

The second thing to note is that she has a lot of contact with Adams himself that it's a direct contact. It's not like he needs to go through someone else to reach her. It's not just her age I think that people should be interested in about her. It's about how close is she to the mayor. That determines how much she could potentially expose the mayor to any type of perhaps wrongdoing.

Brian Lehrer: We just have one minute left, and we're over time as it is because we went so long in our Middle East segment earlier but relates to that in a way because the headline of your article, is 2025 starts today'. That's a quote from somebody. I want to know, as my last question to you, who said that and why. As it relates to 2025, meaning the mayor's reelection campaign, I can tell you that basically, nobody has called in on this topic, and we got those few texts that I read.

People are much more interested still in calling and texting about whether the word genocide properly applies to Israel or Hamas, or neither or both, that kind of thing. Who said 2025 starts today, and why should we even potentially think that this will affect how people view Mayor Adams when it comes time for Israel election campaign, as opposed to whether public safety is good, whether housing is good, whether the economy is good?

Liz Kim: That was said by Evan Roth Smith. He is a political strategist. He's a pollster. We know him best because he worked on Andrew Yang's campaign. He put that out on social media less than an hour after the news broke of the FBI raid. What's interesting about that is I think that you could argue, and allies of the mayor have pushed back on that reading as an opportunistic interpretation on people who want to challenge the mayor in the primary.

At the same time, as I said before, it's not every day that something like this doesn't happen that often. It was the dramatic images of FBI agents coming out with boxes from someone who works on your campaign. Then there was also coupled with the idea that the mayor had to rush back to New York City from a very important meeting he had with the White House on what he has said is his number one priority, which is the migrant crisis.

I think it was those two things that made everybody stop and gasp and like, "What is this and what does this mean? How close does this come to the mayor?" Because the investigation is still developing, I think that for one thing, the left progressives have been struggling to decide who is going to be the person that challenges the mayor. It's very, very difficult. It's a tall order to challenge an incumbent Democratic mayor. I think any little opening they get in this moment, is a change and it's a shift. How has the calculus changed in this moment? Certainly, if it's corruption, that's a pretty compelling campaign argument coming from an opponent if they can make it.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Kim, read her article on this on Gothamist or of course, he here on the station. Thanks for coming on, Liz.

Liz Kim: Thanks, Brian.

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