Hello and welcome to City Beat, I’m your host, Sarah Martinez. Today, we’re diving into one surprising detail from the federal documents in Mayor Eric Adams’s corruption case: he used at least seven different cellphone numbers while under investigation.

Mayor Adams explains, “You have your office phone, you have your personal phone — you can’t mix the two. Many New Yorkers have several phones. I had also my campaign phone.” Federal agents first stopped him on the street in November 2023 and confiscated two or three iPhones and an iPad. The next day, his lawyers turned over another iPhone 13 Pro Max and a second phone he couldn’t unlock because of his dyslexia.

The F.B.I. even sought permission to use a cell-site simulator to detect any new devices. In a search of Gracie Mansion, they seized two more iPhones, an iPad labeled “NYC Mayor’s Office,” and an Iridium satellite phone beside his bed.

Although the charges were later dropped, Adams says the tactics were meant to embarrass him. “They wanted to take my phones at the goddamn marathon,” he recalled. That mix of phones, he insists, was simply practical — and a window into the private side of New York’s mayor.
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