Another day — another resignation of a top government official here in NYC. At this rate, we’re going to be down to the Mayor and the dog-catcher.
We’ll be writing more on this soon — there’s too much to cover now (see this week’s Ops Desk Report, below, for further). But we highlight here one curious circumstance regarding the case against Mayor Adams:
In November of last year, when Adams had his phones taken by the feds, he told them that his personal phone (which he reportedly used for arranging all this travel, etc.) was home — and that he would deliver it to them the next day.
Which he did — while also telling them he changed the password to a six-digit number in order to ensure it wasn’t tinkered with by his staff.
Oh — and that now he forgets that password.
Reader, trust me when I tell you: If your plan was to truly piss-off a group of federal investigators, you couldn’t devise a better method. Consider: They could have followed him home and taken the phone. But they gave him the courtesy of a drop-off. And he pulled that stunt.
Now here’s the complication: Adams’s lawyer must be getting an earful on this. So he recently promised the judge, in court, that they would be producing the contents of that phone in full.
Begging the question: How? If he forgets the password, and the feds can’t get in (which they reportedly have been unable to do) — well then, how can Adams get in?
Only one way: If he was initially lying, and of course he knows the new password.
And therein the trap. Because if he does know the password, he was lying the first time. And unlike with cops, it’s a crime to lie to the feds in the course of an investigation. In sum:
§ 1001 is a crime punishable by up to five years imprisonment – and even eight years imprisonment under certain circumstances – to intentionally lie to or mislead federal agents, including officials from the SEC, DEA, FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office.
Now ask yourself: Adams presumably should know this — he was a cop (of sorts) after all. Yet he risked this so as to protect that phone.
Begging the question: What is on that phone? And has it already been tinkered with, creating yet another potential charge (Destruction of Evidence)?
Indeed, one of Adams’s officials who’s been caught up in the case was just charged with exactly that — deleting Signal, a texting app, before turning the phone over to the feds.
And according to this official’s arrest document, Signal was the app the Mayor “encouraged” others to use (likely because it’s encrypted).
Are his Signal communications the reason the Mayor doesn’t seem to want to turn over his phone?
If so: the trap springs yet again. Because the same process the FBI used to charge this official with tampering can almost certainly be applied to Adams’s phone.
Indeed, Signal is owned by an American company — and while the contents of encrypted Signal texts may not be retrieved, data that demonstrates a phone did use Signal likely can be retrieved from the Signal company itself.
Meaning that, if Adams has not deleted anything yet, he dare not do so now. Because it will likely inspire a tampering charge.
Stay tuned.
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