NYC Mayor Eric Adams brushes off concerns about $3 million debt to his defense lawyer

Josephine Stratman and Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on Apr 17, 2025

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NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams brushed off concerns about the $3 million debt he owes his criminal defense attorney on Thursday, saying that how he pays off his legal fees is “between Eric Adams and his attorney.”

The mayor owes the millions to his lawyer, Alex Spiro, for his work on Adams’ now-dismissed federal corruption case.

“Unless you guys are chipping in money, why are you asking me?” he replied to a reporter’s question about the sizable unpaid bill at a weekly press briefing.

“I have a relationship with my attorneys, and my relationship with my attorney is my relationship with my attorney,” Adams continued. “… And how I pay off my legal fees is between Eric Adams and his attorney.”

The mayor has spent nearly $4.9 million on Spiro but paid just around half of those fees, or around $2.5 million, according to filings from the latest reporting period ending March 31.

The mayor has not received any donations to his legal defense trust since December.

Asked if the millions of dollars he owes are an ethics concern, Adams simply responded, “No.”

But Richard Briffault, a constitutional attorney and former chairman of the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, disagreed with the mayor that his legal debts aren’t of public concern.

“It’s always a concern when a senior public official has a large debt to a person who might have an interest in (the official’s) government decisions,” Briffault said.

Briffault was the head of COIB in 2019, when the city first created the legal defense trust system, which the board oversees.

“There’s the danger or the possibility that the debt can be repaid in other ways than actually paying it off, via favors,” he noted. “That’s always a concern with any public official who has a large debt.”

While Spiro doesn’t have any known direct interests with city government business, many of his clients do, including Jay-Z, who is behind one of the largest casino bids currently pending before state and city government entities.

Spiro didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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