New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris on Monday renewed his calls for Mayor Eric Adams to be removed from office as Adams faces corruption charges and allegations of close ties to President Donald Trump.
"I never expected Eric Adams to say, ‘Oh, you're all right, I'm going to resign.’ And a lot of people said that when he was first charged. I was not one of them. I wanted to let the process play out, give him the benefit of the presumption of innocence and see where it goes,” Gianaris said during an interview on "Mornings On 1.”
“But what we're talking about now is something wholly different. Eric Adams today is not the Eric Adams the people of New York elected. He is a surrogate for Donald Trump, and that is something that is anathema to so many New Yorkers,” he added.
Gianaris—a Democrat who serves as the state Senate deputy leader and represents much of northern Queens, including Astoria—first called for Adams’ removal in a statement posted to X on Friday. In it, he accused Adams of being "compromised" and said he "can no longer be considered the legitimate leader of our city."
Adams has faced mounting criticism from New York lawmakers after at least seven Manhattan prosecutors resigned from their positions rather than carry out a directive from the Justice Department to dismiss corruption charges against him.
Danielle Sassoon, the former top Manhattan federal prosecutor who started the wave of resignations, said she was "confident" Adams had committed the crimes he was charged with. She also said she believed the Justice Department had engaged in "quid pro quo" actions to ensure Adams would help the Trump administration with immigration enforcement.
"It's not so much about the horrible allegations the U.S. Attorney's office has made about quid pro quos of ‘drop the charges and I'll do what you want on policy,’ which seems to be the case," Gianaris said. "It's the fact that he is not running the city. The Trump administration is running the city, and we saw that on display late last week when the head of ICE humiliated him on the national network and said, ‘Do what we're asking you to do, or I'm going to be up your butt in your office.’"
Gianaris was referring to a Friday interview on "Fox & Friends," in which Adams appeared to further align himself with Trump's agenda while discussing plans to work with "border czar" Tom Homan.
"It just highlighted what a lot of us thought was going on," Gianaris said when asked about the optics of Adams and Homan appearing together.
"I have never before seen a situation where the Department of Justice says, ‘We're going to drop the charges for now, we may come back to them because we think they may have merit, but we want you in the interim to do all the things we want you to do on our behalf.’ And it was explicit. It wasn't even like they were hiding that. That's what they're doing,” he added.
When asked if he had spoken with other Democratic leaders about lobbying Gov. Kathy Hochul to take action, Gianaris said discussions were ongoing.
"We talked to the governor. She talks to us. She herself has said she is taking her time to talk to leaders throughout the state and figure out her course of action," he said.