President Joe Biden and his aides kept their distance from New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday after their one-time ally was indicted on sweeping federal corruption charges.
Outside of one condolence call, Biden has not spoken to Adams in any substantive way in nearly two years, according to a pair of White House officials granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations. That rift stemmed from Adams’ frequent criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant influx into the nation’s largest city and long predated the federal probe.
In the wake of those broadsides, Adams was dropped from Biden's reelection campaign advisory board before it was announced last summer. News of the federal investigation first broke months later, culminating in the indictment brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. White House aides noted that the president had been in New York for three days this week for the United Nations General Assembly, but he did not make time for Adams.
Adams, only a couple years after lauding Biden as his political model, has now taken a page from Donald Trump’s playbook. He suggested the investigations into him are politically motivated, seeming to blame his clash with the White House for making him a target.
“Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics,” Adams said in a video statement released after news of the indictment broke.
The White House denied any coordination between the White House and the Justice Department. “DOJ is handling this case independently,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing on Thursday. “I’m not going to go beyond that.”
Jean-Pierre also sidestepped a question on whether Biden shares the view of several New York Democrats that Adams should resign.
Earlier ethical yellow flags in the mayor’s career — an alleged bid-rigging scandal and a self-promotional nonprofit — weren’t enough to stop Biden from once embracing the Black, politically moderate former cop who fit well with the president’s own political persona after he captured City Hall in 2021.
Adams boastfully deemed himself “the Biden of Brooklyn,” comparing his victory over more liberal Democratic primary contenders with how Biden defeated more lefty candidates a year earlier. Biden eagerly appeared at events with Adams, whose police officer background was welcome at a moment when crime across the nation increased during the pandemic.
Biden hosted Adams, then the Brooklyn borough president and a mayoral candidate, at a White House gun violence event in 2021. And the next year, only a month after Adams was sworn in, Biden again appeared with him at a New York City event on combating violent crime.
Two former administration officials involved in planning that February 2022 event said it was largely about needing law enforcement and elected officials to validate the president’s approach to reduce crime.
Biden, they noted on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, has long been especially accommodating to local officials on trips, despite staff concerns about the political risks of appearing with certain elected officials or their associates who would often end up in photo lines with the president. In Adams’ case, some staffers had qualms about his character but recognized the political rationale for hosting an event with the mayor and NYPD officers, said the two former officials.
But that relationship changed after Adams began criticizing the president’s handling of the migrant crisis, which the mayor described in hyperbolic language as an existential threat against the nation’s largest city. Adams said the cost and toll of the migrant crisis “will destroy” his city.
“The president and the White House have failed this city,” Adams said last year, a line many Republicans and conservatives have used to attack the Biden administration.
The mayor’s trademark bravado occasionally frustrated White House aides, including when he declared himself as the “new face of the Democratic Party” and only encouraged speculation about a future White House run.
Despite his criticisms and antics, which White House officials found tiresome, the administration continued to work with the mayor’s office to address the migrant crisis, one White House official said. The White House also worked with the city on other issues, despite the West Wing largely ignoring the mayor himself.
Since their falling out, the president himself has continued to avoid Adams and has barely spoken about him, according to the two White House officials. The two men did speak in March, when Biden called Adams and offered condolences after a city police officer was killed. But the mayor was quickly perceived in Biden’s inner circle as a potential headache and no effort was made to rehabilitate the relationship, the officials said.
“It’s been a long time since any of us gave him much real thought,” said one of the White House officials.
White House aides, the two officials said, have not dwelled on the scandals that threaten Adams’ political future and do not believe that the arrest will have any impact on Biden’s tenure in office or Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
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