NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams’ legal defense trust received less than $100,000 in donations over the past three months, a sharp downturn in fundraising that raises questions about how he’ll be able to afford his high-priced team of lawyers as he faces a federal corruption indictment.

New filings released late Tuesday show Adams’ trust spent nearly $500,000 in the same period, spanning between July 1 and Sept. 30, on lawyer fees and other expenses associated with his defense. That spending doesn’t account for the legal fees being racked up by Adams’ new counsel, celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, who was retained in conjunction with the mayor’s Sept. 26 indictment and has already filed a flurry of motions seeking to get the charges dismissed.

As of the close of the latest filing period, Adams’ trust had raised just over $1.8 million and spent more than $1.7 million. But the trust has also refunded more than $130,000 in donations due to restrictions on certain contributions — meaning the fund is already effectively in the red.

Unless the trust’s clip of fundraising accelerates significantly in coming weeks, that deficit could spell trouble for the question of how Adams is going to foot his legal bills going forward. Adams has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges alleging he took bribes and illegal campaign contributions from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors.

According to the new filings, his legal bills to WilmerHale, a Manhattan law firm that has been representing him in the corruption case, are topping well over $100,000 each month at this stage. That monthly levy is all but certain to grow, as Spiro, who represents celebrities like Elon Musk and is known to charge clients $2,000 per hour, is expected to work alongside WilmerHale.

Vito Pitta, the compliance lawyer for both Adams’ trust and reelection campaign, confirmed to the Daily News the fund’s current “liabilities exceed cash on hand” and that some invoices are as a result sitting unpaid.

But Pitta said the trust expects more money to roll in “as the mayor’s defense enters a new stage.” He didn’t elaborate further.

Adams isn’t entitled to city government-funded attorneys in the case being brought against him by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office as the charges relate to alleged actions taken as part of his political campaigns.

Adams is also limited in the ability to use money raised by his campaign to cover any attorney fees, as the law dictates such funds can only be used on “noncriminal” legal matters, leaving the defense trust as his only fundraising vehicle for his mounting legal tabs.

Payments to WilmerHale, where Adams’ ex-City Hall chief counsel Brendan McGuire is a partner, make up the majority of the Adams trust’s spending so far.

The firm, which specializes in white-collar criminal defense, was paid nearly $427,000 by the trust in the latest filing period alone to represent him in the Turkey investigation. That comes on top of the $936,187 the trust previously paid WilmerHale for representing Adams since the probe burst into public view in November 2023.

Pitta said the latest filing doesn’t include payments to Spiro because he hadn’t invoiced the trust by the close of the reporting period.

On the donation side, the trust’s new filing divulges Adams only received donations from 23 individuals in the latest period, totaling $92,500. Comparatively, the trust pulled in $666,510 from 212 donors between its mid-November 2023 launch and Dec. 31, 2023.

Among the 23 latest donations was a $1,000 contribution made on Sept. 26, the same day the criminal charges were unsealed against Adams, by Miami Beach resident Deborah Robins. That was the only contribution the trust’s new filing reported receiving in the wake of Adams’ indictment.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Robins initially confirmed the trust donation, but then claimed she didn’t make it. “I was not the one that did it. I didn’t put it in there,” Robins told The News. She then hung up the phone. She hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

Pitta said Robins reached out to him via email about how to contribute to the trust. He said Robins submitted a required statement along with her contribution affirming she was using her own funds for the donation.

The criminal case against Adams revolves, in part, around allegations that Turkish nationals made and he agreed to accept illegal campaign “straw donations” — contributions routed through the names of other individuals in order to mask the foreign source of the cash.

Among others who added to Adams’ latest fundraising stretch was James Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, who contributed the maximum $5,000 allowed by law on July 26. Dolan’s two adult sons, Aidan and Quentin Dolan, as well as his father, Charles Dolan, also gave $5,000 each in July, as did Irving Azoff, James Dolan’s longtime business partner.

Donna Coleman, director of James Dolan’s Madison Square Garden Co., contributed the max to Adams’ defense trust this summer, too, as did Gregg Seibert, the firm’s vice chairman, and Joseph Cohen, an ex-president of the MSG Network, the disclosures show.

Together, the donations from Dolan, his relatives and business associates totaled $40,000, nearly half of the latest haul.

Another New York power player who gave Adams’ trust $5,000 in the latest reporting period was Daniel Loeb, a billionaire hedge fund manager, and his wife, Margaret Loeb.

Daniel Loeb recently landed in the headlines after the Washington Post reported he and other affluent businessmen held a private call with Adams in April about deploying NYPD officers to break up pro-Palestine protests on college campuses in the city. In the same call, Loeb and the other participants reportedly also talked about making political contributions to the mayor.

Loeb and James Dolan both donated the maximum $2,100 allowed by law to the mayor’s reelection campaign in July, too.

Other expenses reported by Adams’ trust in the latest reporting period include $20,000 to Pitta’s law firm and just under $12,000 to Artus Group for “vetting and investigative services.”

Pitta has previously said Artus, a Connecticut private investigator firm, has been retained to screen donations to the trust to ensure they comply with the law, which bars individuals who do business with the city or are mayoral subordinates from contributing to Adams’ legal defense.

The release of the trust’s latest filing comes after Adams’ reelection campaign disclosed Tuesday it only received about $140,000 in donations in the three-month period that ended Oct. 7, his worst fundraising quarter since taking office in January 2022.

Pitta said Adams’ most recent fundraising pull was better than it seems. Once estimated public matching funds are factored in, Pitta said Adams has as of now drawn in about $8.2 million — exceeding the $7.9 million cap on spending for primary elections. In a press conference Tuesday, Adams suggested he didn’t need to raise more since he’s banking on matching funds to propel his campaign to the spending cap.

The dip in donations to Adams, who is otherwise known as a prolific fundraiser, comes as a long list of his top advisers have in recent weeks had their electronics seized and homes raided by federal investigators as part of corruption probes that are separate from the Turkey inquiry that resulted in his indictment. Many of those advisers have since resigned from his administration.

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(Daily News reporter Josephine Stratman contributed to this story.)

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