Several of Mayor Adams’ top deputies told him over the weekend they’re either considering or planning to resign over concerns about how his ability to govern could be impacted by the terms President Trump’s Justice Department is placing on the dismissal of his corruption indictment, according to sources familiar with the matter.
After speaking again Sunday, however, three of the top aides — First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom — agreed to put off their resignations for now in order to devise exit strategies, the sources told the Daily News.
The three city government veterans are still planning to step down, though, stressed the sources, who described the current situation as being a matter of “when, not if.”
Torres-Springer, Adams’ second-in-command who has widely been seen as a steady hand amid recent city government tumult, and her two fellow deputies first relayed in conversations with Adams on Friday and Saturday that they are looking to leave.
Torres-Springer, Joshi and Williams-Isom didn’t return requests for comment Monday.
According to two other sources familiar with the matter, Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy has said he’s considering resigning. Levy didn’t return calls and texts Monday.
City Hall press secretary Kayla Mamelak, whose boss is Levy, wouldn’t discuss what he or the other deputy mayors told Adams over the weekend, saying she won’t “get into the details of a private conversation for him or any other DM.”
NBC4, which first reported that Torres-Springer, Joshi and Williams-Isom told the mayor in a Friday meeting they intend to step down, also cited a source familiar with the matter as saying Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Chauncey Parker has communicated a desire to exit the administration.
The dramatic developments come after a Friday night meeting, first reported by Politico, was called so Adams’ deputies could share their thoughts about a recent decision by Trump’s Department of Justice to seek the dismissal of the mayor’s corruption case with some highly unusual strings attached.
A dismissal motion — which Trump political appointees in Washington, D.C. filed Friday night after several federal prosecutors in Manhattan refused to do it and instead resigned — asks the presiding judge to drop the case “without prejudice.”
That means the case can be resurrected at any point, and Trump’s DOJ leaders specifically wrote in a memo they want the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office to “review” Adams’ case for a new prosecution after November’s mayoral election.
In the interim, the DOJ honchos wrote that dropping the case will help Adams play a bigger role in Trump’s hardline deportation agenda — a caveat that has led both allies and critics of the mayor to reason that the president’s looking to pressure him into doing his bidding.
The deputy mayors echoed those concerns in Friday’s meeting, held at Adams’ Gracie Mansion residence, including telling him they are uneasy about whether he can act independently of Trump given the terms of his dismissal, sources familiar with the matter said.
Departures of the deputy mayors would mark a significant challenge for Adams, as between them, Torres-Springer, Joshi, Williams-Isom and Parker oversee some of the most critical agencies in the city government bureaucracy, including the Departments of Social Services, Fire, Health, Sanitation, Transportation and Parks.
The behind-the-scenes machinations come as pressure’s mounting on Adams himself to resign.
Publicly, Adams has maintained he’s staying put since last week’s DOJ order roiled New York’s political establishment. On Sunday, he told parishioners at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Queens he’s “going nowhere” and urged them to “shut up” any criticism of him they come across.
“If you’re not going to be with a brother, Negro, shut up,” he said to applause and cheers from parishioners. “That’s right, shut up.”
But some of New York’s most powerful elected officials have recently come out in support of his ouster, including Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, both of whom called for his resignation late last week.
“It’s probably time that he move aside,” Stewart-Cousins said in Albany on Saturday.
Some have taken it a step further, like Queens-Bronx Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an influential progressive Democrat who said Thursday that Gov. Hochul should use her unique authority to remove Adams from office if he doesn’t willingly leave.
Hochul said last week she will “need some time to process this and figure out the right approach” when asked whether she’d consider booting Adams from office. After Adams was first indicted in September on charges alleging he took bribes and illegal campaign cash from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors, Hochul rejected calls to remove him and signaled she was relying on Torres-Springer to rebuild public trust in the Adams administration.
Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan, who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee and endorsed Adams’ 2021 campaign, has also stopped short of calling on him to resign.
But Brannan said this weekend’s turmoil is proving a serious obstacle to steady leadership at a time of multiple crises, with city budget season around the corner as Trump’s administration looks to strip federal funding from New York City.
“Budget hearings start in two weeks. There is too much at stake and it’s only going to get worse so none of this is a good sign,” Brannan said of the forthcoming deputy mayor resignations. “We can’t afford a crisis of confidence right now.”
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