The corruption clouds around Mayor Eric Adams, it seems, can only thicken.
In an explosive new lawsuit, a real estate firm is accusing the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield of conspiring with high-level officials in the Adams administration to put lucrative city leases in the hands of a single broker with ties to the mayor’s inner ring.
Starting in 2023, the firm JRT claimed that Cushman teamed up with Jesse Hamilton — a close Adams ally who supervises the city’s real estate holdings as deputy commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services — to block them out. JRT had been working as Cushman’s subcontractor and was entitled to some of the multimillion-dollar commissions, the suit alleges. JRT claims it was shunted aside by Diana Boutross, a Cushman & Wakefield vice chair who was put in charge of the firm’s account with DCAS in August 2023 despite lacking experience with city leases. Boutross, a close friend of both Hamilton and the mayor’s then-chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin — who has since been indicted — was installed as account manager “at the behest of Jesse Hamilton,” JRT alleges.
Scrutiny of Hamilton, DCAS and their ties to Cushman & Wakefield had previously forced the department to halt its proposed acquisition of the Bronx Logistics Center — and led the DCAS commissioner to distance himself from Hamilton’s curious promotional video in which he touts the Bronx building. Prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office have also seized phones belonging to Boutross and Hamilton, and the Department of Investigation is reportedly probing Hamilton as well.
Whether any of this adds further to Adams’ woes with the U.S. Attorney’s and Manhattan DA’s offices remains to be seen. Adams, in April, will go on trial for unrelated corruption charges unless he enters a guilty plea before then, or unless Donald Trump, about to be sworn in as president, pardons him. If the lawsuit is to be believed — and the details certainly don’t seem to be farfetched — it’s further emblematic of the petty corruption and cronyism that has infested the Adams administration since 2022.
Like Lewis-Martin, Hamilton was a longtime ally who was promoted rapidly because his primary qualification seemed to be loyalty. When Adams became borough president, he vacated his state Senate seat and successfully backed Hamilton to replace him. Hamilton served in Albany for several years, joining, with Adams’ blessing, a faction of breakaway Democrats who partnered with Republicans to keep them in power. In 2018, he lost a Democratic primary to Zellnor Myrie, who is now running against Adams for mayor.
Other controversies followed Hamilton when he was in the state Senate. He kept a political office in a Brooklyn apartment building belonging to a community group he also ran, violating occupancy regulations. The activities of the two were deeply intertwined.
And as Hamilton faced down Myrie in 2018, Adams, then Brooklyn borough president, made $1 million in government money available for Hamilton to spend in his district. For critics of Adams and Hamilton, it was a blatantly political use of public funds.
Now Adams and Hamilton are both in legal crosshairs. There’s a chance Adams ends up in prison. Hamilton is not yet so endangered, but he’ll be much more vulnerable if he loses his political patron. The next mayor won’t have much use for someone so closely linked to Adams.
Ross Barkan is a journalist and author in New York City.
