NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams was hit with a raft of fedearl corruption charges Thursday accusing him of accepting thousands of dollars in illegal campaign donations from Turkish officials that cost city taxpayers upwards of $10 million in public matching funds.

The massive indictment also alleges Adams accepted $100,000 in lavish trips and hotel stays — all paid by Turkish officials who thought Adams’ rising political career would lead the former NYPD cop to the White House.

“These upgrades and freebies were not part of some frequent flyer or loyalty program,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said at a Thursday press conference unveiling the charges.

The grandiose gifts were intended to buy a “New York City politician on the rise,” Williams said. “These are bright red lines and we allege that the mayor crossed them again and again for years.”

Adams is facing 40 years in prison after being charged with bribery, campaign finance, wire fraud and conspiracy offenses, federal officials said.

The charges stem from an ongoing investigation by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office that has scrutinized allegations Turkey’s government funneled illegal donations into Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers. Earlier this month, it was revealed the probe is also looking at communications between Adams and the governments of five other foreign countries.

In the indictment, federal investigators described a scheme that spanned “nearly a decade,” starting when Adams became Brooklyn borough president in 2014.

Adams allegedly accepted “improper valuable benefits, such as luxury international travel, including from wealthy foreign businesspeople and at least one Turkish government official seeking to gain influence over him,” the 56-page indictment charges.

Federal prosecutors say Adams proceeded to solicit and accept illegal straw donations from Turkish nationals and, once he became mayor, his “foreign-national benefactors sought to cash in on their corrupt relationships with him” by securing favors from him.

Since becoming mayor, Adams has kept this favor-swapping relationship going and has continued soliciting illegal straw donations from Turkish nationals for his reelection campaign, according to the indictment.

It’s illegal to accept campaign donations from non-U.S. citizens. To get around this, Turkish officials would send the donations through a third party, known as a straw donor, who was a citizen.

Adams accepted the donations, allegedly knowing their origins, and maximized his gains through New York City’s matching funds program — netting his 2021 campaign over $10 million in public funds.

“This is a grave breach of public trust,” Williams said, adding that Adams solicited these benefits “even though he knew they were illegal.”

No one else is named in the federal indictment. Adams is expected to be arraigned on the charges Friday or early next week.

Flanked by more than a dozen faith leaders outside Gracie Mansion Thursday, Adams proclaimed his innocence — and shot down calls to step down.

“It’s an unfortunate day and it’s a painful day. But aside of all of that, it’s a day that will finally reveal why for 10 months I will have gone through this. And I look forward to defending myself,” he said. “I look forward to having my legal team handle this as I handle the city of New York.”

Williams said politics had nothing to do with the federal investigation.

“We are not focused on the right or the left — we are only focused on right and wrong,” he said. “We allege that Mayor Adams abused that privilege and broke the law. Laws that are designed to ensure that officials like him serve the people — not the highest bidder, not a foreign bidder, and certainly not a foreign power.”

After accepting the travel perks and free flights, Adams was told by the Turkish national that “it was his turn to repay” him — by pressuring then-FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro to fast-track the opening of a new 36-floor Turkish consulate, the indictment reads.

“The FDNY official responsible for the FDNY’s assessment of the skyscraper’s fire safety was told that he would lose his job if he failed to acquiesce,” according to the indictment.

“Some of the people at FDNY thought the building had so many issues and defects that the building was not safe to occupy,” Williams said at the press conference. “So the Turkish official sent word to Adams that it was, quote, his turn, unquote, to support Turkey.

“Adams delivered and pressured the Fire Department to let the building open,” Williams added. “The FDNY professionals were convinced that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t back down. And so they did. They got out of the way and let the building open.”

When reached Thursday, Nigro said he told the FBI “everything that I know.”

“They have all that information,” Nigro said, adding that Adams’ request to expedite the inspection was unusual.

“It was the first time I had ever heard from him about something like that,” he said. “Whatever he did, he did. It doesn’t involve the Fire Department.”

Earlier Thursday morning, federal investigators converged on Gracie Mansion and executed a search warrant, seizing at least one phone, Adams’ attorney Alex Spiro said.

“Federal agents appeared this morning at Gracie Mansion in an effort to create a spectacle (again) and take Mayor Adams phone (again),” Spiro said. “He has not been arrested and looks forward to his day in court. They send a dozen agents to pick up a phone when we would have happily turned it in.”

Several elected officials and advocates have called on Adams to resign in light of the indictment, claiming he can’t oversee city government while defending himself in a criminal federal case.

Adams first traveled to Turkey in 2015, where he met many of the unnamed foreign nationals who are key to the indictment, identified as a Turkish “official,” a Turkish “promoter” and a Turkish “businessman” who owns a Turkish university. The trio would spend years pulling together illegal straw donations to Adams’ campaign and bribe him with gifts, the indictment claims.

The Turkish nationals who funneled the money into his campaign coffers and sent him on expensive trips did so believing they weren’t just buying influence with a mayor, but a future president, the indictment reads.

“The Promoter also celebrated Adams’ prospects with additional people, telling others – including Adams himself – that Adams would soon be president of the United States,” the indictment reads. “Similarly, the Turkish official wrote to (an Adams staffer) that given Adams’ increasing prominence … the Foreign Minister of Turkey is ‘personally paying attention to him.'”

Adams never disclosed the upgraded flights and hotel stays and “sometimes created fake paper trails to try to cover up the travel benefits he solicited and received,” Williams said.

The indictment says Adams falsely suggested “that he had paid, planned to pay, for travel benefits that were actually free.”

He also “deleted messages with others involved in his misconduct, including, in one instance, assuring a co-conspirator in writing that he ‘always’ deleted her messages.'” the indictment reads.

Through it all, Adams would preach about how important fundraising was to winning a mayoral campaign.

“You win the race by raising money… Have to raise money,” he said in 2018 texts to a person the indictment identifies as “a close supporter.”

“Everything else is fluff,” Adams added, according to the indictment.

The supporter he was texting is “Bling Bishop” Pastor Lamor Whitehead, who was convicted in March of federal wire fraud and attempted extortion charges for swindling a parishioner out of her life savings. The same texts are quoted in Whitehead’s federal indictment.

Last year, the feds seized multiple phones and electronic devices from the mayor as part of their corruption probe.

Even with the feds breathing down their necks, Adams and at least two underlings tried to hide information on their phones, according to federal prosecutors.

Longtime aide Rana Abbasova is identified as “Adams staffer” in the indictment and fundraiser Brianna Suggs is identified as “Adams fundraiser.” Their homes were raided on the same day last November.

“After learning that FBI agents had arrived at her residence, but before answering their repeated knocks at her door, (Suggs) called Adams five times, even though the agents had not yet given (her) any indication of the purpose for their visit,” the indictment reads. “When (she) then spoke with the FBI agents, she agreed to discuss many subjects, but refused to say who had paid for her 2021 travel to Turkey.”

When Abbasova agreed to be interviewed by FBI agents, she “excused herself to a bathroom and, while there, deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate with Adams, the Promoter, the Turkish Official, the Airline Manager, and others,” the indictment read.

After the FBI raided Abbasova’s New Jersey home, she agreed to cooperate with investigators, The News previously reported.

When FBI agents seized Adams’ phone in November, the mayor “told them he had changed his password and now didn’t remember it and so couldn’t help them unlock the phone,” the indictment reads.

Adams is the first New York City mayor in the modern era to face criminal charges while in office. His administration has been reeling in recent weeks from additional investigations and a series of high-profile resignations.

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(With Graham Rayman, Cayla Bamberger and Josephine Stratman.)

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