Eric Adams indictment live updates: New York City mayor charged with bribery and wire fraud

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shot down the idea that the federal indictment of Eric Adams was politically motivated in a news conference Thursday.

“The DOJ is handling this case independently. I’m not going to go beyond that,” Jean-Pierre said.

The statement follows claims and suggestions that the Adams indictment could have been a form of political retribution for the mayor’s criticism of the Biden administration’s migration policies.

Adams planted the seed of that idea in a video statement distributed Wednesday night.

“I always knew that if I stood my ground for you, that I would be a target, and a target I became,” Adams said in the video. “Despite our pleas, when the federal government did nothing as its broken immigration policies overloaded our shelter system with no relief, I put the people of New York before party and politics.”

“I have been facing these lies for months since I began to speak out for all of you and their investigation started,” Adams continued, appearing to suggest that he was facing persecution for his pushback on the Biden administration.

On Thursday, after the Adams indictment was unsealed, conservative media quickly expanded on the idea.

In a Fox News segment, co-host Lawrence Jones said: “I find the timing a little coincidental, and I don’t believe in coincidences and politics. He was a co-chair of the campaign for Biden and Harris, and all of the sudden when he starts to criticize them on their migrant crisis, he gets an investigation.”

The New York Post ran an article in the wake of the indictment’s unsealing diving into Adams’ history of criticizing the Biden administration, leaning into the idea that his prosecution was connected.

Some online influencers have also picked up on the idea. In a post on X, Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire called the prosecution a “political witch hunt” in a post shared with his more than 150,000 followers on the platform.