New Adams Administration Inquiry Focuses on City Leases

The Manhattan district attorney’s office seized phones from five people, including aides to Mayor Eric Adams, as they returned from a vacation together.

As federal prosecutors scrutinize Mayor Eric Adams and his top aides, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has opened yet another corruption investigation into City Hall, this one involving the city’s leasing of commercial properties, people with knowledge of the matter said.

As part of the inquiry, investigators have seized the phones of at least five people — including Mr. Adams’s chief adviser, a top New York City real estate official and a broker involved in city leases, the people said. The investigation has focused at least in part on possible bribery, money laundering and other crimes, one of the people said.

Details of the district attorney’s inquiry have not been previously reported. It brings to five the number of corruption inquiries surrounding the mayor of America’s largest city and represents still another area of scrutiny for the many law enforcement agencies examining Mr. Adams and his top aides.

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The phones and other electronic devices were seized on Sept. 27 at Kennedy Airport as the mayor’s chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, returned from a vacation in Japan with a group of friends. That group included the city real estate official, Jesse Hamilton; the broker, Diana Boutross and others, the people said.

As the district attorney’s investigators seized electronic devices, they also notified Ms. Lewis-Martin that they were simultaneously searching her home in Brooklyn. At about the same time, a different set of investigators from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which brought an indictment against the mayor late last month, served Ms. Lewis-Martin with a grand jury subpoena seeking documents in that case.

Ms. Lewis-Martin and Ms. Boutross, who works for the commercial real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, are close friends, according to people who know them both. But Ms. Boutross also appears to manage her firm’s lucrative account with a city division run by Mr. Hamilton. Her presence on the trip seemed likely to raise questions about whether such participation might constitute a conflict of interest.

Arthur Aidala, Ms. Lewis-Martin’s lawyer, issued a statement defending her conduct.

“These searches and any negative connotations associated with them or this preplanned vacation are baseless,” the statement said. “Ingrid Lewis-Martin has conducted herself at the highest level of ethical standards while serving this city, and in due time all the facts will come out and will be supported by evidence and demonstrate everything was done properly.”

A City Hall spokeswoman said, “We hold all employees to the highest ethical standards and have been abundantly clear that they must follow the law.”

Ms. Boutross could not be reached for comment. A person who came to the door last weekend at the home of Mr. Hamilton, a former state senator who is now a deputy commissioner at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, told a reporter to leave the property.

The full scope of the state corruption investigation, which is being conducted by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, and the city’s Department of Investigation, is unclear, and it appears to be in its early stages. Representatives for both agencies declined to comment.

But a search warrant for the seizure of at least one of the phones late last month indicated that the investigators were seeking documents, financial records and communications with city agencies and public authorities related to possible bribery, bribe receiving, money laundering and other crimes, the person said.

Lisa Lashley, the mayor’s director of appointments, and Ms. Lewis-Martin’s deputy chief of staff, Tanaisha Ramos, were also on the trip to Japan, the people said. Their devices were not seized, a City Hall spokesman said.

The group also included Adam Clayton Powell IV, a former City Council member and state assemblyman who is now a lobbyist. On Instagram, Mr. Powell posted photos and a description of the Japan trip, which included visits to Osaka Castle, a wasabi farm and a Japanese hotel with hot springs where the guests were encouraged to walk around in kimonos. It was not clear whether his devices were seized. Mr. Powell did not respond to a request for comment.

The seizure of Mr. Hamilton’s phone and Ms. Boutross’s and Mr. Powell’s participation in the Japan trip were earlier reported by The Daily News.

The district attorney’s investigation is the latest corruption inquiry involving the mayor and his inner circle to spill into public view. Three of the other four are federal investigations being conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which on Sept. 26 unsealed an indictment charging Mr. Adams with bribery, conspiracy, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Mr. Adams has pleaded not guilty. The fifth is being handled by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.

Of those whose phones were seized by investigators at Kennedy Airport, Ms. Boutross stands out because she does business with the city.

For most of her career as a real estate broker, Ms. Boutross appears to have specialized in leasing retail space. Her professional biography said she had worked for 20 years in real estate, with 15 of those spent at a firm that specialized in retail brokerage. When she left that firm to join Cushman & Wakefield in 2015, it was to continue working in retail, The Commercial Observer reported. She rose to become a vice chair of retail at Cushman & Wakefield in New York City.

Ms. Boutross has also been a longtime supporter of Mr. Adams. In 2019, she invited acquaintances to a “meet and greet” fund-raiser she co-hosted at a hotel near Times Square for Mr. Adams’s first mayoral campaign. The invitation listed the maximum donation as $5,100.

Retail leasing and office leasing are two distinct areas of expertise, and it is unusual for a broker who has spent decades working in one to move over to manage a large account in the other.

But at Cushman & Wakefield, Ms. Boutross acquired more office and mixed-use leasing experience, a representative of the firm said, and she was tapped last October to replace a retiring broker who had managed a Cushman account with New York City’s real estate department. In that job, she was responsible for helping the city find office and industrial space when agencies grew, shrank or otherwise had new needs. It is a role that comes with hefty commissions.

Though Ms. Boutross is said to have represented herself as the single point of contact for the account, a Cushman spokesman said that Ms. Boutross actually shared management of the account with two other brokers.

On Sept. 27, the evening of the phone seizures, Ms. Lewis-Martin appeared on the radio show of her criminal defense attorney, Mr. Aidala, and described her encounter with the investigators without mentioning that her traveling companions had had their own encounters, too.

She said the investigators were “polite” and that she was “vociferous.”

One of the investigators, she said, “explained to me, ‘Look, we don’t want to make this more than what it needs to be. We don’t want to have to arrest you for being noncompliant. And, you know, we don’t want to make this bigger.’ And he was very nice, and I apologized to him for being impolite, and I requested to speak with my attorney.”

And she protested her innocence, also seeming to refer to the mayor and other colleagues wrapped up in the investigations around him.

“We are imperfect, but we’re not thieves,” Ms. Lewis-Martin said. “I do believe that in the end that the New York City public will see that we have not done anything illegal to the magnitude or scale that requires the federal government and the D.A.’s office to investigate us.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.