Tiffany Raspberry, Adams’ intergovernmental affairs director, and Camille Joseph-Varlack, his chief of staff, will take on the deputy mayor roles effective immediately, Adams said at his weekly press conference Monday morning at City Hall.

Joseph-Varlack is becoming the “deputy mayor of administration,” while Raspberry’s being given the title “deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs,” Adams told reporters. Raspberry’s deputy mayor title is new to the municipal bureaucracy, and Adams’ office said she’ll now coordinate intergovernmental affairs teams “across all city agencies,” while Varlack’s portfolio is expanding to include oversight of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Joseph-Varlack, who will also retain her chief of staff role, already makes a base annual salary of $287,663, the deputy mayor level pay grade, and won’t get a raise, according to Adams.

Raspberry, a longtime Adams ally who worked on and helped raise funds for his 2021 campaign, currently makes $260,000 and will get a salary bump to the deputy mayor level, he said.

Prior to the promotion, Raspberry applied recently to become Fordham University’s new vice president of external affairs — a job she ultimately didn’t get, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. A since-closed job posting for the Fordham post says it has a minimum starting salary of $310,000.

Adams, who has pleaded not guilty in a federal corruption indictment, has seen a large number of senior advisers depart his administration in recent months, several after becoming ensnared in corruption investigations of their own.

A Fordham University spokesman declined to comment Monday. Raspberry didn’t return a request for comment, but Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said her Fordham application played no factor in her promotion.

The elevation of Joseph-Varlack and Raspberry means Adams now has eight deputy mayors, more by one than other recent mayors, according to Louis Cholden-Brown, an attorney and City Charter expert. Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch at certain points in their tenures had seven deputies, the highest number Cholden-Brown said he could recall.

With Josephine Stratman 

Walden’s $629,736 cash pull in the latest period, which spanned between Oct. 8 and this past Saturday, is larger than what any of Mayor Adams’ other challengers have raised in a single previous reporting window. However, it won’t be clear until Wednesday’s public disclosure deadline how much money the other 2025 mayoral candidates, including Adams, raised in the most recent span.

Walden, who shared his fundraising numbers exclusively with the Daily News ahead of the deadline, said he also has about $300,000 of his own money in his independent mayoral campaign account, giving him roughly $930,000 in cash on hand as June’s primary elections loom six months away. Only ex-City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Adams had larger 2025 campaign cash balances as of the last reporting period, which ended Oct. 7.

“Friends and strangers stepped up in huge numbers to pledge their support for our campaign and an independent path forward for New York City. We achieved our goal; out-raising all the challengers in less than half the time they had before I entered the race,” said Walden, who has never before campaigned for public office. “We will be fully funded by the height of the campaign season. And we will be pounding miles of pavement to speak with voters across the five boroughs about my plan for restoring integrity and accountability to City Hall.”

Still, Walden isn’t expected to be eligible for public matching funds when the Campaign Finance Board issues its second round of payments Wednesday.

Walden’s $629,736 came from 834 individual contributors, 492 of whom are New York City residents, he said. In order to be eligible for matching funds, mayoral candidates need to raise at least $250,000 from 1,000 city residents.

Walden told The News he hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to participate in the public matching funds program. If he opts out of it, he could accept as much as $3,850 from each donor, more than the $2,100 that candidates who participate in the program can collect.

The sizable first fundraising run from Walden, who launched his campaign Oct. 23, gives him a competitive edge as he mounts a third-party mayoral bid.

As an independent, Walden hasn’t absolutely ruled out running in the June 24 Democratic primary in which Adams already faces a sprawling field of challengers. But Walden says he may seek the Republican nomination, too, in addition to running as an independent in November’s general election.

Petitioning for the primaries begins at the end of February.

A seasoned litigator with a history of representing various New York politicians, including potential 2025 mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, Walden has pitched himself as a government expert inspired by Michael Bloomberg.

With Adams’ federal indictment looming over the 2025 race, Walden has made rooting out corruption in city government a key plank in his campaign, recently floating a proposal to give the city Department of Investigation more power to go after crooked politicians. Walden is currently representing Joseph Jardin, a top FDNY official who alleges he was pressured by Adams to approve the opening of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan in 2021, a key episode in the mayor’s indictment, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Previously, Stringer held the distinction of drawing in the most cash in a single reporting period out of all the candidates running against Adams, raising just shy of $411,000 for his Democratic mayoral campaign between January 2024 and July 2024.

Stringer was the only candidate who received the Campaign Finance Board’s first public matching funds payment on Dec. 16, netting him $2 million for a total cash balance of $2.3 million.

Adams, whose 2025 campaign has a $3 million cash balance, was also eligible for matching funds last period. But the CFB denied him the payment, citing concerns about his indictment, which alleges he solicited illegal straw donations and bribes from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors. Adams is expected to stand trial in April, just weeks before the Democratic mayoral primary.

Several other 2025 candidates, including Comptroller Brad Lander, have said they expect to be eligible for matching funds Wednesday. All the candidates in the mayoral field, which also includes Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie and ex-Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake, are expected to have their latest fundraising hauls disclosed Wednesday as well.

Speaking with a hoarse voice from the lower Manhattan courtroom, Arkan, 76, admitted to orchestrating straw donations to Adams’ mayoral campaign through workers of the construction company he partly owns, KSK, and then reimbursing them. Arkan indicated he planned to enter the plea last month — the first resulting from the ongoing probe of illicit foreign donations to the mayor’s campaign.

“When I wrote the checks, I knew the Eric Adams campaign would use the checks to apply for public matching funds,” Arkan said, referring to the system under which city political candidates get donations from local residents matched eightfold with city dollars.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen told the court that if Arkan had gone to trial, prosecutors would have provided testimony, photographs, video electronic records, and other evidence to establish he illegally colluded with a Turkish consular official to funnel money to the mayoral campaign that Adams personally solicited at a restaurant in April 2021. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Dale Ho accepted Arkan’s plea and set his sentencing for Aug. 15.

While it wasn’t stated that the plea deal requires Arkan to testify against the mayor, his cooperation in the feds’ ongoing corruption investigation is all but certain, with Cohen asking his sentencing to be scheduled after Adams’ April trial. It is common for federal defendants who take plea deals to agree to testify or cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing.

The plea comes as prosecutors with the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office recently said in a filing they’d uncovered “additional criminal conduct” the mayor and others engaged in and may bring more charges.

Were Arkan to testify, though, Adams’ defense team believes he would have nothing incriminating to say about the mayor.

“We know from the government’s own interviews that Mr. Arkan repeatedly said that Mayor Adams had no knowledge of his actions.” Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, said in a statement. “Mr. Arkan’s conduct will have no bearing on the mayor’s case whatsoever.”

Adams is accused of soliciting and accepting illegal straw donations from Arkan and others, as well as luxury travel upgrades and perks in exchange for doling out political favors for the Turkish government. He is expected to head to trial on the five counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud in April — just two months before he’s up for reelection in the June primary.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Arkan appears in Adams’ indictment as “Businessman #5.” Per the indictment, he hosted a fundraiser for the soon-to-be mayor at his firm’s Brooklyn office in May 2021, a month after the dinner with the mayor mentioned in court Friday. On the day of the fundraiser, records show that Arkan and 10 employees of the firm donated nearly $14,000 cumulatively to Adams’ campaign, for which Arkan reimbursed them.

Records show that after submitting those contributions for public matching funds, the Adams campaign raked in an additional $22,000 in taxpayers’ cash off of them.

All of those donations were illegal straw contributions funded by Arkan and made “at the behest of” Reyhan Ozgur, Turkey’s consul general in New York, according to Adams’ indictment. Ozgur and Arkan allegedly agreed to make the illegal donations during the dinner with Adams in April 2021.

“We are supporting you,” Ozgur told Adams at that dinner, according to court papers.

As part of his plea, Arkan agreed to making $18,000 restitution payments and not to contest a sentence below six months. He also faces the risk of being denaturalized, deported, and denied entry to the U.S. in the future, Ho warned him.

The offense Arkan pleaded to could result in a maximum of up to five years in federal prison, three years supervised release and $250,000 in fines.

Arkan’s attorney, Jonathan Rosen, had no comment after Friday’s plea hearing.

The resignation came after The News asked Adams’ office late Thursday for comment about the fact that Bernard, who leads the city’s largest evangelical church, maintains a residency on Long Island. Under city law, members of Charter Revision Commissions must be New York City residents.

“Reverend Bernard has informed the commission that he will be stepping down due to the time commitment that serving would require,” Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the commission, said in response to the inquiry. “The commission is grateful for his initial offer to serve. A suitable replacement will soon be named.”

A News review of voter rolls, property documents and other records raised questions about whether Bernard met the residency requirement. He is actively registered to vote as a Republican in Suffolk County, listing a one-family, six-bedroom home in St. James as his home address in Board of Elections paperwork.

Property records show Bernard, 71, and his wife, who have six children, bought the home for $1.4 million in 2021. They took out a $1.1 million mortgage on the sprawling 2.3 acre property that they finished paying off in March 2024, records show. On his personal Facebook page, Bernard lists a PO box near the St. James home as his mailing address.

Conversely, The News found no record of Bernard or his wife owning property in the city since the mid-1990s. One of the questions The News asked Adams’ office was whether he maintained a residence within the five boroughs that was not reflected in property records, such as a rental apartment.

Bernard didn’t respond to calls and texts this week.

He and his wife have owned and sold several properties on Long Island over the past few decades, records show. A New York Times profile of Bernard from 2009 said he and his wife “live with three dogs on Long Island.”

A former-city Law Department attorney who served as a counsel on one of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Charter Revision Commissions said the residency requirement exists with good reason.

“The charter is the city’s constitution and any amendments to it will have the force of law, so the requirements are there to make sure someone who doesn’t have a stake in the city can’t change [the charter],” said the attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bernard, who’s known as the “power pastor” for his political connections and has more than 32,000 parishioners at his Christian Cultural Center church in East New York, was among 14 people picked by Adams in December to be part of his second revision commission, which he tasked with crafting City Charter amendments that could boost housing production.

Bernard was one of only two members on Adams’ new commission absent from the panel’s first meeting this past Tuesday. At the outset of the meeting, commission members introduced themselves by stating which of the city’s five boroughs they reside in.

Bernard’s resignation comes after Adams’ first Charter Revision Commission launched last year also include the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, who sparked residency concerns over his New Jersey home. At the time, Adams’ office said Daughtry was able to serve on the commission because he’s registered to vote in the city and splits his time between Brooklyn and New Jersey.

The goal of Adams’ latest commission is to formulate referendum questions to get onto the November 2025 general election ballot. In announcing the panel last month, Adams’ office said he wants it to come up with questions that’d amend the Charter to “combat the city’s generational housing crisis.”

The launch of the mayor’s panel came after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced plans to roll out her own revision commission. One of her top charter revision priorities has been to give the Council more oversight of city government appointments the mayor can currently make unilaterally.

Due to a quirk in state law, the Council can’t advance referendum questions onto a ballot that includes questions crafted by a mayoral commission. Speaker Adams and her Democratic colleagues have  accused the mayor of launching his latest commission in a deliberate bid to block their effort — a charge he denies.

In spring 2024, Adams launched his first commission, which also ended up blocking the Council from advancing their own set of referendum questions onto this past November’s ballot.

That commission got several questions onto the November ballot that proposed placing more restrictions on the way the Council drafts laws, especially ones related to public safety. All of the questions except one were approved by city voters in November.

With Josephine Stratman 

Adams, who’s up for reelection this year, announced he’s looking to invest $650 million in new homelessness and mental health initiatives over the coming five years and is committed to building 100,000 new homes in Manhattan.

He also used the speech to tout what he views as some of the major accomplishments of his first term, such as driving down some crime categories and getting his “City of Yes” housing plan passed by the City Council.

The speech painted a broad picture of the mayor’s priorities, but did not go into detail on a number of the initiatives, some of which would likely require support from the Council.

That may present a challenge. Adams and the Council’s Democratic leaders have sparred of late over various policy disagreements, including over questions of how much say the Council should have over mayoral appointments.

The mayor is also heading into strong legal and political headwinds, with his trial on corruption charges slated to begin in April and a packed field of Democratic opponents taking him on for the party’s mayoral nomination in June.

Adams didn’t directly address his reelection prospects during his speech — although he did acknowledge he has faced calls to step down as mayor, but repeated that he will “step up” instead.

“Despite all we have accomplished, I won’t stand here and try to tell you our work is complete,” Adams said in the roughly hour-long speech at The Apollo in Harlem.

“Now is the time for renewed dedication and continued action, because no matter what challenges we face, I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will.”

Homelessness

Adams pointed to a rise in street homelessness and a dearth of housing as being among the most pressing issues facing the city. Adams promised the city would over the next five fiscal years put $650 million in city budget funds toward getting people off subways and into housing.

According to a City Hall press release, that money will go toward funding 900 new Safe Haven shelter beds — which are tailored for unhoused individuals suffering from drug addiction and mental illness — and building a new transitional housing facility designed to provide support for those experiencing chronic homelessness. City Hall did not immediately have details available about locations or timelines.

“We must do more to help people struggling with serious mental illness,” he said. “We can’t just walk past them and act like they can take care of themselves when they can’t. We know that too many New Yorkers cycle between the hospital and homelessness.”

A rash of high profile crimes in which the accused suffers from some sort of mental illness have left New Yorkers on edge.

The $650 million Adams is proposing would need sign-off from the Council, whose speaker, Adrienne Adams, issued a statement after his speech voicing frustration with how budget negotiations have fared with the mayor’s administration over the past four years.

“Far too often, we’ve faced resistance from the administration when it comes time to negotiate the budget,” said the speaker, whose later this month set to start talks with the mayor’s team on this year’s budget. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to achieve these priorities for our city and will also hold the Administration accountable to delivering for New Yorkers.”

As a broader goal, the mayor vowed to work toward making sure no more children in New York City are born into the shelter system. To that end, he announced a pilot program to connect expecting parents with services to help find permanent housing before their child is born.

In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 1,000 kids in the city were born into shelters.

Housing, swimming, parks

The mayor also used his speech to announce a new plan, dubbed “City of Yes for Families,” intended to build more units specifically for families through zoning changes and expanding rent payment assistance programs.

“I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will,” he said.

As part of that, Adams said the city would build 100,000 new units in Manhattan — a massive 11% increase for the already densely-packed island where local residents often push back on new housing and zoning changes. City Hall did not have specific details on the plan.

The mayor also vowed to expand free swim lessons to 4,800 second graders living in underserved communities across the city each year. That’s on top of the roughly 13,000 kids who currently get free swim lessons from the Parks Department.

Adams also addressed the issue of cleanliness in the city’s parks, saying the city would add a second cleaning shift to spots at over 60 parks around the city. He also announced plans to open more schoolyards in underserved areas.

The parks push comes after Adams faced some heat last year for not reversing budget cuts to the city Parks Department that were first enacted to offset spending on the city’s migrant crisis.

In contrast to his State of the City address last year, Adams only touched briefly on the asylum seeker crisis that has cost the city billions of dollars since it started in spring 2022 shortly after he was first inaugurated as mayor.

“When Washington refused to take action on a broken immigration system; I stood up for our city and pushed back while still caring for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers,” he said. “But we know we still have more work to do and more people to help. Too many families are still facing the same struggles my family did.”

Opponents, union criticize Adams

To kick off Thursday’s speech, Adams thanked his deputy mayors and other senior officials seated in the theater’s front row. The mayor has seen many of his top advisors resign in recent months after they were ensnared in various corruption investigations of their own.

“The hardest job in politics is working for Eric Adams,” he said, nodding to his aides.

Adams also used the speech to point to his record on public safety and the adoption of the “City of Yes” plan, which is estimated to create about 80,000 new units of housing over the coming 15 years. He touted crime numbers showing Brooklyn has seen the “lowest amount of gun violence” in its history and that overall index crime dropped citywide in 2024 as compared to 2023.

His political rivals — some of whom were sitting in the audience listening to the speech — slammed the speech.

“New Yorkers know that our city is neither safer nor more affordable,” Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running against him in June’s primary, said in a statement. “New Yorkers want honest, effective leadership, not pomp and circumstance and empty promises. They want a Mayor who is focused on their problems, not his own.”

While some categories of crime are down, others, like felony and misdemeanor assault, are up. Homelessness has also increased during Adams’ term and the city has experienced spikes in poverty.

Progressive mayoral challenger Zohran Mamdani sat in the gallery and live-tweeted reactions to the speech. “Just incredible to hear a Mayor who’s raised the rent year after year on more than two million stabilized tenants talking about the ‘hard choices’ families have to make just to get by,” the Queens Assembly member wrote on X.

Advocates also called attention to budget cuts Adams made to pre-K and 3-K.

“If New York City is the best place to raise a family, that’s news to the thousands of families moving out each day due to the cost of child care,” said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, a prominent advocacy group that helped fight the early childhood cuts last year.

Ahead of the mayor’s speech, dozens of members of the NYPD sergeants union, known as SBA, gathered outside The Apollo to protest what they view as the Adams administration’s refusal to address pay disparities that leave them earning less than some of the officers they supervise.

In his speech, Adams addressed that request: “We are going to settle a contract with the SBA, trust me we will.”

Protesters from the “Close Rikers” coalition and Make the Road, an immigrant advocacy group, also rallied outside.

The report issued Wednesday by the city Department of Investigation amounts to a review of whether the NYPD improved its policies following DOI’s damning 2021 report on security detail misuse by ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio, who had his detectives perform tasks for his children and used them on trips around the country during his failed 2020 presidential campaign.

The city pays for police protection for various public officials, including the mayor, the comptroller, the public advocate, the City Council speaker, diplomats and heads of state via a special unit in the NYPD’s Intelligence Bureau. The five county district attorneys also receive protection but from detectives assigned to their offices.

De Blasio was fined $474,794.20 for the cost to the city of improper use of his detail, including providing police protection during his campaign trips outside the city. In May 2023, a city administrative judge ordered him to pay the fine, but he has contested it and the dispute remains unresolved.

The head of de Blasio’s detail, now former NYPD Inspector Howard Redmond, pleaded guilty in August 2023 to obstructing DOI’s investigation and was fired, ordered to perform community service and had to make a public apology.

Howard Redmond

The 2021 report concluded that “the root of nearly all of the issues” was the “complete lack of any written policies or procedures at the NYPD for the operation of the mayoral security detail.”

DOI’s 2021 report also found detail members received limited training and that there was very little retention of records. De Blasio’s detail, that report said, was using encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp in ways that flouted city rules.

The latest report, summarizing an inquiry DOI undertook to see whether the NYPD acted on recommendations it made in 2021, found similar issues are persisting.

According to the new report, the NYPD did create “protection detail guidelines” in November 2022 that limits the use of the detail to “official business.”

But the guidelines don’t define what constitutes “official business,” the DOI report said.

“Four of the five members of service serving on or supervising security details interviewed by DOI, including the deputy inspector and lieutenant supervising a detail, said they were unaware of any rules, regulations, or limitations on the use of a security detail,” the report said without identifying which city official the cops in question protected.

“If there is, I wouldn’t know where they are,” the lieutenant told DOI about limits on the use of the detail.

The NYPD also doesn’t track trip logs, summaries of a given shift or tour, or other records detailing how the unit was used, DOI investigators found.

Moreover, the training that is provided to members of the mayor’s detail only spans two days, the report said, though the NYPD does send members for training by federal law enforcement agencies. “DOI has significant concerns about the sufficiency of the training provided to members of service,” the report said.

Under Mayor Adams’ tenure, the NYPD has drawn criticism for assigning security details to some officials who typically don’t receive them — including ex-Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks and chief technology officer Matt Fraser, as first reported by the Daily News in 2022. In late 2022, Adams said he personally made the call to give a detail to Banks, who resigned this past fall after getting his home raided by federal authorities as part of a corruption investigation.

The NYPD has been somewhat resistant over the years to DOI’s recommendations on detail use. At one point, the NYPD took the position that neither its rules nor the City Charter should limit how police vehicles assigned to the detail are used, the DOI report said.

In its written response to DOI, the NYPD “rejected” a recommendation to keep records in a way similar to procedures followed by the Secret Service, the Diplomatic Security Service and U.S. Marshals.

In a statement issued Wednesday, an NYPD spokesperson said the cops assigned to executive protection are highly trained.

“The department treats with utmost seriousness its mandate to safeguard the security of all of our protectees to the highest professional standards,” the statement said. “The department thanks the DOI for its report. We look forward to reviewing it and considering its recommendations.”

The suit was brought by the competitor, JRT Realty, which alleges Cushman & Wakefield executive Diana Boutross was picked at Hamilton’s “behest” in late 2023 to take over running Cushman & Wakefield’s brokering of commercial leases between the city government and private property owners.

The Manhattan Supreme Court action comes after investigators in September seized phones and other electronic devices from Hamilton, Boutross and Ingrid Lewis-Martin, then Adams’ chief adviser at City Hall, after they landed at JFK returning from a trip to Japan.

The seizures were part of a probe led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office scrutinizing possible corruption in the city’s commercial property leasing sector, according to sources. No charges have been filed, but Lewis-Martin was indicted by the Manhattan DA last month on bribery charges unrelated to the commercial property dealings; she has pleaded not guilty.

Both Cushman & Wakefield and JRT are on a contract with Hamilton’s agency, the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, under which both firms are supposed to share in the commissions that can come from locking in leases between the city and private property owners.

JRT, a woman-owned business, claims in its suit that Boutross, upon being tapped to take over Cushman & Wakefield’s account with the city, sought to “destroy the reputation” of JRT and collect that firm’s commissions. The suit only names Cushman & Wakefield as a defendant, accusing it of defamation and tortious interference in business relations.

Cushman & Wakefield rep Mike Boonshoft said Tuesday that “any change in our work” with the city would only have come from its amended rules around contracting with minority- and/or woman-owned businesses, or so called MWBEs, “as well as other legitimate commercial reasons.”

“Now that we have a copy of the complaint, we will review and respond accordingly,” he added.

Neither DCAS nor Hamilton returned requests for comment.

Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges as part of an unrelated case related to Turkey’s government, did not offer comment via a spokeswoman.

According to JRT’s suit, Hamilton, whose DCAS post comes with overseeing the city government’s commercial leasing program, told Cushman & Wakefield in late December 2023 it would lose its commission deals with his agency unless Boutross, a personal friend to him and Lewis-Martin, was put in charge of the DCAS account.

Hamilton, a key political ally to the mayor who has known him for decades, allegedly issued that directive after Cushman & Wakefield’s previous manager on the account, Robert Giglio, announced his retirement.

Boutross was subsequently installed in the role, and once in it, she and Cushman & Wakefield “engaged in a premeditated campaign to block JRT from the DCAS account and destroy JRT’s reputation with DCAS, other city agencies, brokers, and landlords,” according to the suit.

That included Boutross writing an April 2024 email to DCAS officials in which she “falsely stated” JRT would no longer be involved in brokering leases due to “performance issues,” according to a copy of the email included with the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also points to a DCAS bidding process that remains ongoing for the renewal of the commission-based contract that JRT is part of along with Cushman & Wakefield.

The new contract released by DCAS for bids in March 2024 eliminated a previous provision requiring that a certain number of deals be brokered by women-owned enterprises, an “abrupt change” that could “effectively eliminate” JRT from doing business with the agency, according to the suit.

Ultimately, JRT charges that Cushman & Wakefield and Boutross undertook the alleged smear campaign to try to gobble up for themselves the 33.75% commissions that JRT gets on property deals, including for the Bronx Logistics Center, a warehouse in Hunts Point that the city government was in talks to buy for $750 million.

Although JRT was supposed to be roped into the Logistics Center deal, Boutross allegedly sought to cut out the firm around March 2024 by not looping them in on key communications, the lawsuit says.

Around this time, Hamilton repeatedly walked through DCAS’s offices and told employees there, “Remember that the Bronx Logistics Deal is only a C&W deal!” according to the suit.

Additionally, the suit notes Hamilton appeared in a promo video for the Logistics Center, which the Daily News first reported last year was produced by one of his DCAS aides and disseminated to city agencies.

In the video, which DCAS has said was “unauthorized,” Hamilton urged city agencies to formulate plans for leasing space at the center, which the city government ultimately never entered into a deal to buy after the unusual video emerged last year.

“If the Bronx Logistics Deal had closed, Boutross would have earned millions of dollars in commissions under the DCAS Contract,” JRT’s complaint reads.

The suit comes after Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler questioned DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina in October about why JRT had gotten “slashed” out of brokering deals after Boutross landed the account. Molina replied at the time he had been “informed by my team that that was not the case.”

In response to Monday’s lawsuit, Restler told The News that DCAS needs to be overhauled.

“This lawsuit further underscores the corruption involving the Adams administration and Diana Boutross and the need for a comprehensive investigation into the city’s shady real estate division,” Restler said.

General counsels for nearly all city agencies, including the NYPD, were invited to the private virtual briefing, said the sources, who spoke with the Daily News on condition of anonymity.

The purpose of the briefing was for the Law Department to give the counsels a broad overview of the existing sanctuary status laws — which prohibit city agencies from cooperating with federal immigration authorities in most scenarios — with the understanding that they would then train staff on best practices, according to the sources.

The briefing comes less than two weeks before the second presidential inauguration of Trump, who has vowed to launch “mass deportations” of undocumented immigrants upon taking office, regardless of whether they’ve done anything illegal besides residing in the U.S. without status.

It also comes as Mayor Adams, a conservative Democrat, has stated publicly he’s looking at whether he can use executive power to roll back some of the immigrant protections included in the sanctuary laws.

Adams has argued beefed-up protections enacted by the City Council under ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration went too far in barring the Police and Correction Departments from holding immigrant inmates on behalf of federal authorities seeking to deport them, unless they have a judicial warrant and the person in question committed a violent or serious crime.

Adams says he believes the city should be able to turn over undocumented immigrants to the feds if they’ve been charged with serious or violent crimes, not just convicted.

Adams spokeswoman Liz Garcia wouldn’t say whether the mayor’s proposals to revise sanctuary protections were discussed in Tuesday’s briefing, only telling The News that the Law Department “provides privileged briefings to agency general counsels on a regular basis.”

There are some 500,000 undocumented immigrants living and working in New York City. That’s in addition to the tens of thousands of mostly Latin American migrants who have arrived in the city since spring 2022 as part of a large influx from the U.S. southern border.

Last month, Adams met at Gracie Mansion with Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming “border czar” who’s expected to take the lead on his “mass deportation” effort.

After their sitdown, Adams told reporters he shares the “same goal” as Homan and said the city had made “terrible mistakes” in the past by limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

“This can’t be a safe haven for violent individuals. You have a privilege to live in this country, and those who want to commit acts of violence, they are violating that privilege,” Adams said. “[Homan’s] desire is clearly, again, what my target area is.”

The prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office wrote in a court filing late Monday they unearthed evidence of the conduct as part of their “ongoing investigation” into the mayor’s ties to Turkey’s government.

The feds didn’t elaborate on what the conduct in question is or who the other individuals are.

The disclosure comes after the feds in October — days after first charging Adams with bribery and other crimes — said it was “quite likely” they would bring a superseding indictment and it was “possible” it could include additional counts against the mayor.

Since then, Adams’ defense attorney, Alex Spiro, has accused prosecutors of overplaying their hand, writing in a filing last month that the “incriminating evidence” they planned to base their superseding indictment on “does not exist.”

Monday’s filing from the prosecutors came in response to that claim from Spiro and indicates they are still pursuing a potential superseding indictment.

Spiro has also argued in court papers that the case against Adams is almost entirely based on testimony from Rana Abbasova, Adams’ ex-Turkish community liaison who is cooperating in the federal probe. The Adams lawyer has argued Abbasova is a disgruntled staffer with an ax to grind.

In Monday’s filing, the feds pushed back on that characterization.

“Despite Adams’s claim that the case against him is based on a particular purported witness, the affidavits generally rely on records rather than the witnesses, and do not rely on the individual he often discusses at all,” prosecutors wrote.

Punching back at the feds, Spiro on Tuesday slammed their contentions.

“This is amateur hour. They are just looking for a headline instead of doing the right thing,” Spiro wrote in an email to the Daily News. “I assume we are at the point where new Yorkers are not falling for it.”

In a press conference later in the day at City Hall, Adams reiterated he believes he’s innocent when asked about the latest submission from the feds.

“Even Ray Charles can see what’s going on … I’ve said over and over again, I have done nothing wrong,” he told reporters.

Monday’s move comes at a time of flux for the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office.

Former U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who brought the case against Adams, stepped down last month after President-elect Donald Trump — who has publicly entertained pardoning the Democratic mayor for his alleged crimes — announced he plans to appoint corporate lawyer Jay Clayton to take over the reins at the prominent office.

The office is now being led by Edward Kim, who was deputy U.S. attorney under Williams.

Adams’ Sept. 26 indictment, which made him the first New York City mayor in modern history to face criminal charges, alleges he took bribes and illegal campaign cash, mostly from Turkish government operatives, in exchange for doling out political favors.

The favors allegedly include the mayor pressuring the FDNY to resolve fire safety issues at the Turkish consulate in Manhattan so the building could open in time for a visit by the country’s leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in fall 2021.

Adams has pleaded not guilty and is expected to stand trial in April.

Besides Adams, Mohamed Bahi, a former aide to the mayor at City Hall, was indicted in November on charges alleging he obstructed the investigation into the mayor. He’s in talks with the feds about a potential plea deal.

Just before Christmas, the feds also revealed Erden Arkan, a Brooklyn construction company executive, plans to plead guilty to funneling illegal straw donations into Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers on behalf of a Turkish government executive.

Beach-Mathura filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in her home state of Florida this past Aug. 28, laying out how she’s nearly $333,000 in debt to various creditors, court papers reviewed by The News show.

Two weeks later, on Sept. 11, Beach-Mathura filed her slip-and fall suit against the city in Brooklyn Federal Court, court records reveal.

The alleged tumble happened Oct. 22, 2023 — a month before she first filed the $5 million assault claim against Adams that he denies — when Beach-Mathura, a practicing Buddhist, was on her way to Myosetsuji Temple in Flushing, where she was going to attend a ceremony, according to a transcript of an interview about the incident she had with city government lawyers last spring.

Specifically, Lorna-Beach, 68, told the city lawyers she had just exited the Court Sq. subway station in Long Island City and was about to cross the street to catch a bus.

“I started moving across a square, a large square area that looked like dirt, so I started walking across that area, that’s when I tripped,” she said under oath, according to the transcript, which was submitted in court.

“I started walking across and all of a sudden I felt my foot, my right foot trip on something and I started stumbling and I was trying to steady myself, and my left foot was moving forward and I tripped again and the next thing you know, I’m falling hard onto the sidewalk.”

Lorna-Beach alleges the fall was so bad she had to be taken to Elmhurst Hospital after sustaining “severe and permanent injuries” to her left wrist, left hand, left elbow, right knee, neck, back and chest.

According to her suit, the fall happened because of a “dangerous, defective and uneven” kink in the sidewalk that the city should have remedied. She submitted multiple photos along with her suit showing an empty sidewalk tree pit lined with bricks, several of which appear displaced, and claimed her injuries should prompt a judge to order the city to pay her a sum that “exceeds $75,000, exclusive of interests and costs.”

In a response filed in October, an attorney for the city Law Department rejected Lorna-Beach’s argument, writing she “should have known” of “the risks and dangers incident to engaging in the activity alleged” and that the city “owed no duty” to her. In a subsequent letter to the court, the Law Department attorney wrote the city will seek to dismiss her suit because of a lack of specificity in an initial notice she filed detailing her allegations.

The presiding judge has asked Beach-Mathura and the city to provide a status update Jan. 31.

Beach-Mathura, who lives in Miami, and the lawyer representing her in the slip-and-fall suit didn’t return requests for comment Tuesday.

Amid the slip-and-fall action, Beach-Mathura’s bankruptcy filing is pending in the Sunshine State.

According to records submitted in Southern Florida Bankruptcy Court, Beach-Mathura owes $328,855 to more than a dozen creditors, including banks and hospitals. She reported in court papers she has no regular income, but owns a home worth about $380,000 and receives roughly $3,100 per month in retirement and Social Security benefits.

Spokespeople for Adams and the Law Department, which represents him in the assault case, declined to comment on Beach-Mathura’s bankruptcy and slip-and-fall actions.

Her new legal actions come as her assault suit against Adams is also pending, a case that first came to light in November 2023, when she filed a notice of claim with the city.

Last March, she then filed her lawsuit, which alleges Adams tried to force her to perform oral sex on him in a parked car in 1993 while they worked together for the since-defunct city Transit Police Department. Beach-Mathura, who’s seeking at least $5 million in damages over the alleged assault, says that when she refused his proposition, he masturbated and ejaculated on her leg.

Adams has vehemently denied the accusations, saying he does not “recall ever meeting this person.” In August, Beach-Mathura’s attorney filed records in court showing she wrote emails about the alleged assault before Adams was elected mayor in 2021.

Beach-Mathura has filed several unsuccessful lawsuits in recent years, including a civil action against American Airlines in 2014 that alleged an employee injured her by causing her to fall out of her wheelchair. She has also written a self-help book offering advice about how to file pro se lawsuits.