The raid — along with the mayor’s unusual about-face from a slate of high-profile meetings about the migrant crisis — adds another layer to the increasing focus on people close to the mayor by law enforcement officials.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is currently investigating an alleged straw donor scheme involving the mayor’s reelection campaign — though neither Adams himself nor anyone in his administration is implicated.
And Bragg has accused the mayor’s former buildings commissioner of abusing his authority for personal gain, though again, Adams is not implicated in the complaint.
Suggs’ history with Adams dates back to his days as Brooklyn borough president, where she began working in 2017 as an intern, according to her LinkedIn profile. She stayed at Borough Hall through the end of Adams’ term there in 2021, city records show.
She ran the office’s gender equity portfolio and worked under Ingrid Lewis-Martin, according to a person with knowledge of the office. Lewis-Martin was deputy borough president and is now chief adviser to the mayor in City Hall.
She then began fundraising for Adams’ 2021 election campaign, claiming to have raised $18.4 million between the primary and general campaigns (though Adams was also involved in a public matching system that paired taxpayer dollars with individual contributions).
Adams’ reelection campaign has reported paying Suggs’ firm, Suggs Solutions, for campaign consulting. She also signed a contract in August 2022 to lobby the city on behalf of the owner of the East Broadway Mall, a Chinatown shopping center in a city-owned building, the Daily News reported, and is involved in fundraising for a committee tied to the Brooklyn Democratic Party — a staunch ally of the mayor.
On Thursday morning at around 7:30, Adams filmed himself on a D.C.-bound plane, previewing for his social media audience a series of meetings he was supposed to have — alongside the mayors from Chicago and Denver — with the White House and federal lawmakers.
By 9 a.m., his office sent out notice that all the meetings were cancelled and provided a cryptic statement about why he was heading back to New York City, saying only that he had to deal with “a matter.”
A mayoral spokesperson did not comment on the FBI raid.
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