NYC Mayor Adams defends Florida meeting with Trump, says he was 'fighting for' money spent on migrant crisis

Rebecca White and Emma Seiwell, New York Daily News on Jan 18, 2025

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NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Saturday doubled down on defending his meeting with soon-to-be president Donald Trump, claiming he was “fighting for” New Yorkers, as fellow Democrats accused him of cozying up to Trump in efforts to get a presidential pardon for his federal corruption case.

“I don’t care if it’s a Democrat, Republican, Socialist. I don’t care who’s the president,” Adams told a crowd gathered at National Action Network’s Martin Luther King Day at their Harlem headquarters.

The mayor implied he discussed the $6.9 billion spent on the city’s migrant crisis with Trump at their Friday meeting in Florida.

“I’m (going to) defend this city because those are your dollars that we took out of this city that we should have been spending to deal with the issues in our city. That’s what I was fighting for,” Adams told NAN attendees, including Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, and Scott Stringer, one of Adams’ challengers in the 2025 election cycle.

After a roughly hour-long lunch meeting with Trump at his namesake golf club in Palm Beach, Adams issued a statement Friday evening in which he said they “briefly touched on a number of issues” but that his corruption case wasn’t one of them.

“To be clear, we did not discuss my legal case, and those who suggest the mayor of the largest city in the nation shouldn’t meet with the incoming president to discuss our city’s priorities because of inaccurate speculation or because we’re from different parties clearly care more about politics than people,” Adams’ statement read.

Rev. Al Sharpton, who hosted the event, backed the mayor up.

“Y’all didn’t get concerned when (Trump) called the governor. He can talk to Hochul, he can talk to Eric,” Sharpton said.

“Our elected officials got to talk to the president,” he added.

Adams addressed his federal case Saturday morning, noting he has leaned into his faith amid his legal woes.

“There’s nothing enjoyable about what I’m going through right now,” Adams said. “When you have a clear mission as guided by God, you don’t worry about what is happening, because God is in charge.”

Adams used city taxpayer dollars to pay for his Florida visit as his office said there was a “city purpose” in the trip.

Adams, who has pleaded not guilty, is expected to stand trial in Manhattan Federal Court in April — just weeks before June’s Democratic mayoral primary — on criminal charges alleging he took illegal campaign cash and bribes from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors.

Trump, the first convicted felon to become president, has sympathized with Adams over his indictment, claiming, without evidence, that they are both victims of politically motivated prosecutions launched by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department. Last month, Trump stated outright that he would consider pardoning Adams once Trump is back in the Oval Office, and the mayor hasn’t ruled out accepting it.