Brian Laird on WNYC with our continuing coverage of the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams this morning on federal charges that include bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.

We are expecting the U.S. Attorney's News Conference in about five minutes to officially announce

those charges. The written indictment has been released. So we know that those are the specific

charges now soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations,

also bribery, also fraud.

Joining us with more reaction now is the controller of the city of New York and an announced

mayoral hopeful for 2025, we should say.

So that context is important.

He already intended to run against Eric Adams next year.

That's Brad Lander. Controller Lander, welcome back to WNYC. Good morning, Brian. Thank you so much.

Are you surprised by this? I mean, even with, you know, as dramatic as it is and all the investigations

that we knew were taking place, I think, for me,

honestly, for a lot of people in New York, they hear the news of these actual indictments,

and they think, wait, what? Really?

I feel the same way. I mean, we've known it's coming, the drip, drip, drip, drip of investigations,

but it's still shocking. I mean, you know, deleting emails to cover up the fraud, taking foreign

contributions, getting matching funds for them, doing favors. It's, it's terrible. It's sad for the city.

It's a violation of trust. It's hard to read for people

who love government, who love the city. So yeah, I feel sad and angry and surprised and

disappointed, even though I knew this was probably coming. He's innocent until proven guilty.

That's one of the reasons that the mayor said in his remarks

just a few minutes ago and in the video that he released last night that he intends to stay on

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