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TD Bank closed Mayor Adams’ campaign account after indictment, records show
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Apr 30, 2025
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Ed Reed / Mayoral Photography Office
By
Brigid Bergin
Published Apr 30, 2025
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TD Bank closed Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign account within a week of his federal indictment, according to newly released records that detail his campaign’s ongoing struggles with financial record-keeping.
The records, which Gothamist obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, reveal previously unreported issues with the campaign’s fundraising. They include an instance when the Adams campaign accidentally submitted fundraising records for Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, a close ally of the mayor and a candidate for public advocate. The records indicate that even though the federal case against Adams has been dismissed, his campaign’s fundraising account is still coping with the ripple effects.
In December, the Campaign Finance Board announced it was withholding more than $4 million in public matching funds from Adams, citing the case against him. With the case now dropped, the newly released documents expose additional reasons for the Board to withhold campaign funds – and reveal other previously unknown issues, including the termination of the campaign’s bank account.
A spokesperson for TD Bank did not respond to a request for comment about why it decided to freeze Adams’ campaign account just three days after his indictment. But a good government expert told Gothamist that it’s standard practice for banks to do so when there’s an investigation connected to an account they are holding.
“ It's a risk assessment by the bank that would've been triggered initially by the subpoenas that went out,” said John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, referring to the ongoing investigation that ultimately led to charges against Adams.
The bank's decision set off a flurry of emails between Adams’ campaign compliance attorney, Vito Pitta, and staff at the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
“We were recently informed that TD Bank is no longer able to maintain the committee’s account at the institution,” Pitta wrote in an email to the Campaign Finance Board on Oct. 3, 2024, one week after the mayor was indicted on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery and accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions. He wrote that the bank had stopped processing transactions as of Sept. 29, 2024, three days after the indictment.
“Please prioritize opening a new bank account as soon as possible so that the campaign can timely deposit contributions received,” Samantha Perez, the Campaign Finance Board’s deputy director of campaign services, replied to Pitta a day later.
Records show the campaign withdrew the remaining nearly $3 million from its TD Bank account on Oct. 11, 2024. It set up a new account at Webster Bank on Nov. 8, where it deposited the funds on Nov. 13.
The Campaign Finance Board recorded the transfer as a financial reporting discrepancy in its initial review of Adams’ October campaign finance filing. In February, both Politico New York and the New York Daily News reported the campaign was missing $3 million.
Records show Adams’ compliance attorney, Ardian Tagani, called out the Campaign Finance Board in a March 17 response to the agency for how it recorded this discrepancy, calling it “at best incompetent and at worst intentionally prejudicial to the committee.” He argued that the coverage of the discrepancy “resulted in significant harm to the Committee ahead of the Democratic primary that would not have occurred but for the CFB’s prejudicial accounting.”
A spokesperson for the Campaign Finance Board did not respond to a request for comment.
At the same time, the documents show the Adams campaign continued to engage in sloppy record-keeping. In a response to Tagani’s filing, Perez, the Campaign Finance Board’s deputy director of campaign services, wrote on March 18 that the campaign needed to correct the documents it filed.
“Between the pages of 336 through 381 in the attached PDF (after the Exhibit B cover page) the response includes reports belonging to Jenifer Rajkumar’s Statement Review #7,” Perez wrote.
Campaign finance records show their firm, Pitta LLP, is also doing fundraising compliance work for Rajkumar’s campaign.
Pitta did not respond to a request for comment on why records from Rajkumar’s campaign ended up in an Adams campaign filing.
A month later, in an April 15 email, the Campaign Finance Board offered an updated list of reasons for why it was withholding public matching funds from Adams’ campaign. The letter cites a legal complaint against Adams’ former aide Mohamed Bahi; allegations against Erden Arkan, a Brooklyn businessman who pleaded guilty to making illegal donations to Adams' campaign; and a slew of legal filings related to the mayor’s indictment – including acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s order to drop the mayor’s charges, former acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon’s resignation in protest and Judge Dale Ho’s ultimate order to drop the charges.
Danielle Willemin, the Campaign Finance Board’s director of auditing and accounting, wrote that the Board believed Adams had “engaged in conduct detrimental to the program that is in violation of federal, state and/or city law, including the Campaign Finance Act and Board Rules.”
She said that if the campaign failed to respond to information requests, its matching funds would continue to be withheld. She also warned there may be bigger problems coming to the Adams’ campaign, including fines or a potential mandate to repay matching funds payments awarded to his 2021 campaign.
Tagged
new york city
Politics
eric adams
Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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