The home of a consultant with ties to the New York city mayor, Eric Adams, was raided by the FBI on Thursday.
Brianna Suggs, Adams’s top campaign fundraiser, was questioned by the FBI’s public corruption squad as they searched her house in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.
The raid prompted Adams to cancel several meetings scheduled for Thursday morning in Washington DC, where he planned to speak with White House officials and US House representatives on issues relating to immigration.
Suggs served as the “fundraiser and director of logistics” for Adams’s mayoral campaign between 2019 and 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Before her role in Adams’s mayoral campaign, Suggs worked for Adams when he was the Brooklyn borough president, the office he held before becoming mayor.
The reason for the FBI raid has not been disclosed yet.
In September, the local New York City news publication the City reported Adams and his campaign team repeatedly ignored city regulators’ requests to identify the sources of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to his campaign – a total of $300,000 from more than 500 donors. It is not known if any campaign finance laws were violated.
At the time, Adams’s campaign counsel, Vito Pitta, said: “The campaign has responded to every notice from [the campaign finance board] as appropriate – while also investigating concerns as appropriate – and will continue to follow all rules and best practices as mandated by the CFB.”
In response to the FBI raid on Suggs’s home, Pitta told the Associated Press that the mayor was not contacted as part of that inquiry. “The campaign has always held itself to the highest standards,” he added. “The campaign will of course comply with any inquiries, as appropriate.”
