Final Friday, the day Eric Adams made history because the main sitting mayor of New York City to be arraigned in federal court docket, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, his chief adviser, stepped off a world flight at J.F.Okay. airport and positioned federal and articulate laws-enforcement agents looking ahead to her. Representatives from the The ny District Attorney’s place of job wanted her telephones. “I want a phone,” she told them, jet-lagged and pissed off. An investigator suggested that he will possess her arrested apt there within the terminal. She gave up her instrument. A federal agent then stepped forward and handed Lewis-Martin a subpoena. Lewis-Martin, who many steal into consideration the 2d most highly effective particular person in New York City government, borrowed a friend’s phone to call her lawyer, Arthur Aidala.
Aidala became as soon as as soon as profiled by the Times below the headline “The Good-Guy Authorized legitimate for The United States’s Tabloid Villains.” About a year within the past, Lewis-Martin started doing a weekly interview section on his discuss radio program, “The Arthur Aidala Vitality Hour.” After the airport, Lewis-Martin went to Aidala’s place of job and, after debriefing with him, went on his night time program, as scheduled. “Right here is something I’d surely no longer in total attain, which is attach a shopper on the radio,” Aidala mentioned, acknowledging the unorthodox explain. But in all his years as a criminal-protection prison legitimate, he mentioned, he had never had a shopper “so adamant within the truth that they did nothing defective.” Lewis-Martin had insisted that they play her frequent intro music: the 1979 disco traditional “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” by McFadden & Whitehead. She then delivered a line as revealing about native politics because the relaxation ever mentioned by the proud bosses of Tammany Hall. “We are depraved, but we’re no longer thieves,” she mentioned. “We possess no longer finished the relaxation illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the D.A.’s place of job to evaluation us.”
It became as soon as conventional of Lewis-Martin to discuss of “we” and “us.” No subject having limited public profile outside the tightly knit world of municipal politics, no one has had nearer gain entry to to or more influence over Adams throughout the direction of his political profession. Lewis-Martin, a Christian chaplain and old public heart-school social-studies trainer, ran Adams’s 2006 marketing campaign for a seat within the Dispute Senate, when he made the soar from the N.Y.P.D. to elected place of job. (Lewis-Martin’s husband and Adams had been mates at the police academy within the 19-eighties.) As Adams’s profile within the metropolis rose, Lewis-Martin intentionally cultivated a popularity as his enforcer and watchdog. “I’m no longer Michelle Obama,” she as soon as told a reporter. “When they trip low? We drill for oil.” She added, “I’ll meet you down within the subbasement.”
Few in or around City Hall can present you with a concise description of Lewis-Martin’s role in Adams’s administration. “She would possibly seemingly well well gain Eric to achieve issues that others couldn’t gain him to achieve,” a old administration legitimate told me. At a meeting with senior workers, Adams as soon as outmoded a football metaphor to represent her role, asserting that Lewis-Martin ran his “particular teams,” in step with two of us mindful of the meeting. No most up to the moment or old metropolis legitimate I spoke with became as soon as vastly stunned that she’s been caught up in a federal investigation. On “The Arthur Aidala Vitality Hour,” Lewis-Martin mentioned that, despite discuss from newshounds defending City Hall that she became as soon as coöperating with investigators, she became as soon as standing by Adams. She’d merely spent the previous two weeks on an oddly timed shuttle to Japan with diverse Adams associates. “They’d the immense rumor flying, that I went away and I’m never coming reduction,” she mentioned. “I’m going to be with my brother.”
Whether or no longer Adams will stop precise to his of us, and vice versa, is a central ask of Adams’s remaining time as mayor. He has pleaded no longer responsible to the prices against him. U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who has called Lewis-Martin to testify in front of a big jury, clearly hopes each person will flip on each person. On Wednesday, a public-corruption prosecutor from Williams’s place of job told a federal mediate that it became as soon as “seemingly” that they’d carry prices against extra of us in reference to Adams’s criminal case. It sends moderately a tag, charging Adams first. Why would any individual come up for a boss who’s already going on? After I contacted Aidala to question whether Lewis-Martin deliberate to acknowledge to any questions that will seemingly well well be attach to her in front of the big jury, or whether she would possibly seemingly well well plead the Fifth, he told me, “We’re going to coöperate to basically the most easy of our potential. But there’s issues that they’re asking and shopping for that don’t exist.” He added, “She’s no longer going to injury Eric in any formula, form, or assign.” A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s place of job in The ny declined to comment.
Loyalty, of the model he realized while wearing an N.Y.P.D. uniform, is the important thing code of Adams’s politics. It explains powerful of what appears to be like inexplicable about his tenure as mayor. Primarily based fully on documents I got final year, Lewis-Martin has persevered to work for him even through classes when she felt her possess lifestyles became as soon as in hazard. “I’m reiterating and declaring for the file that I’m in misfortune of my non-public security,” she wrote in an e-mail to Adams within the summer season of 2018, when he became as soon as Brooklyn borough president—around the same length of time that federal prosecutors now issue he became as soon as accepting flight upgrades, posh hotel stays, and meals courtesy of Turkish officials and electorate. “Right here is an especially unsuitable explain,” Lewis-Martin wrote. Her e-mail concerned an altercation that she had with a Brooklyn grifter shut to Adams named Lamor Whitehead, identified within the tabloids because the Bling Bishop, whose exploits I wrote about final year for the magazine.
In response to the corruption scandal now engulfing his administration, Adams has insisted that he holds these around him to the same excessive frequent he holds himself to. The documents I even possess undercut this claim. They order correct how tolerant he would possibly seemingly well well fair even be of these he lets into his internal circle. His enabling of Whitehead even examined his relationship with Lewis-Martin, who took drastic steps to verify out to gain him to seem for issues her formula. “I’m officially notifying you, as my major, in regards to the threats and attempted assault,” she wrote to Adams. “If the relaxation happens it is for your survey and below your rule.”
In 2021, Conceitedness Beautiful requested Adams to name basically the most easy stay performance he had ever been to. “Curtis Mayfield at the Wingate Live performance Series,” he mentioned, relating to an corrupt order Mayfield performed in Brooklyn within the summer season of 1990. Precise throughout the performance, a lighting rig above the stage received knocked free in a wind storm and fell on Mayfield, leaving him timorous. “It became as soon as an unbelievable stay performance sooner than that came about,” Adams mentioned. “Actual so unfortunate.”
Free summer season concerts in Wingate Park are an outmoded political custom in central Brooklyn. With give a steal to from the borough president’s place of job, non-public firms with interests within the borough backed the free outside reveals—an association that drew some scrutiny in Borough President Marty Markowitz’s day. But immense acts came through—Wyclef Jean, Salt-N-Pepa, Aretha Franklin—and the reveals drew tremendous, grateful audiences. In 2014, when Adams succeeded Markowitz as borough president, he enthusiastically inherited the stay performance sequence. It became as soon as a highlight of his calendar every summer season.
In 2017, in step with recordsdata I received from Brooklyn Borough Hall in accordance with a Freedom of Recordsdata Law question, the reveals nearly didn’t happen. The organizers of the reveals received into a billing dispute, and pulled out at the final minute. Lewis-Martin, as senior adviser to the borough president, received fervent to place the match. She received fervent with Whitehead for abet. Whitehead became as soon as a church chief who had finished time in Mumble Mumble for id theft, and Lewis-Martin never cherished him—she had been complaining to Adams about Whitehead since he first popped up shut to Adams about a years earlier. But Whitehead had connections within the music and leisure industries, and Lewis-Martin it sounds as if attach aside her concerns for the sake of the concerts. “I spoke to President Adams,” she wrote in an e-mail to a neighborhood of of us alongside side Whitehead that Might maybe fair. “We know that we must always always utilize a no longer-for-profit. He and I will conduct outreach calls to about a sponsors who we in actuality feel will have the flexibility to posthaste generate some funds.” With Whitehead’s involvement, the reveals went forward that summer season. Performers incorporated Erica Campbell, Gigantic Daddy Kane, and James (D-Prepare) Williams. Sponsors listed on promotional materials for the reveals incorporated Con Edison, Pepsi, and Traders Bank.
Adams has repeatedly denied piquant Whitehead in any legitimate government feature, or being fervent himself in any of Whitehead’s various industry ventures. Whitehead spent years seeking to map his church and attain his non-public interests by dropping Adams’s name some distance and huge metropolis. His involvement within the 2017 Wingate concerts appears to be like to possess emboldened him. One night time throughout the sequence the following summer season, he and Lewis-Martin had a fight. Lewis-Martin memorialized the match in an e-mail to Adams’s legitimate Brooklyn Borough Hall fable, which is archived by laws. “Correct afternoon President Adams,” she wrote. “Hooked up is a duplicate of a police represent.” Primarily based fully on the represent, at 11:35 P.M. on August 15th, Whitehead had confronted Lewis-Martin in a “restricted” backstage space, waved a finger in her face, and screamed, “I’m going to possess you” and “I’m going to achieve you in.” In her e-mail, Lewis-Martin mentioned that she wanted Adams to attach “safeguards” in space to withhold Whitehead some distance flung from her. “I’m concerned for my security and welfare, moreover as for members of my instantaneous family,” she wrote. “One must possess the flexibility to be at work with out misfortune of being bodily or verbally assaulted.”
