More than two decades ago, I met a New York City cop with an up-by-the-bootstraps story.
Eric Adams had powerful hands, a quick mind and a threatening scar on the back of his shaved head — a relic from his days in the 7-Crowns, a youth gang named after the whiskey brand.
Yes, that Eric Adams is now mayor of New York City.
Now his legacy as a Black man who beat the odds is on the brink of imploding over a bribery scandal. There is an ugly pattern here. Adams’s tragic predicament is in line with another up-by-the-bootstraps Black American, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
As someone who has known Adams and Thomas for decades and written about both, I have turned to an old Latin phrase popularized eight centuries ago by Saint Thomas Aquinas: “‘”Corruptio optimi pessima” — “The corruption of the best is the worst of all.”
Thomas’s legacy is now at risk after repeated instances of alleged corruption — accepting lavish gifts from wealthy patrons with interests before the high court. That is a close match with the charges facing Adams. The mayor faced charges of illegally accepting luxury flight and hotel accommodations to help the Turkish government with New York building permits. He was also accused of taking a large number of illegal straw-man campaign contributions, including some donations from Turkey, designed to help him secure $10 million in matching public funds for his victorious 2021 campaign.
In a different era, the odds of Black men surviving such charges were zero. But America is flying through turbulent political air stirred by President Trump.
Trump has evaded criminal prosecution while winning a second term by saying he is the victim of “lawfare” by a powerful legal and political establishment. Trump was born rich, but he has used that image of the little guy being treated unfairly to appeal to Black America as well. He told a group of Black conservatives last year: “I got indicted for nothing … a lot of people said that’s why Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as … being discriminated against.” Trump made that defiant argument despite convictions on business fraud and sexual assault.
Trump later said his edgy mugshot made him a star in Black America.
“When I did the mugshot in Atlanta … you know who embraced it more than anyone else? The Black population,” Trump said. A gold-framed photo of the mugshot, on the front page of a newspaper, now hangs outside the Oval Office.
Echoing Trump’s defiant pose for Black America, Adams has gone to Black churches to fuel the idea that he, as a Black man trying to make it, is a victim of a powerful establishment bent on damaging Black people with an unfair, political prosecution.
“If you’re not going to be with a brother — Negro, shut up. That’s right, shut up,” he told cheering churchgoers, according to The New York Times.
It was pure Trump. The defiant pose got Trump’s mostly white base to look the other way. Adams is hoping for the same result with his Black base.
With Trump’s success in dodging legal consequences, there is a new standard for viewing the impact of previously crippling falls into shame by politicians. Trump pardoned former convicted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And with Adams, that extends to Black politics.
Years ago, when Adams was an idealistic, young policeman, he was openly critical in speaking to me about the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins. He felt Dinkins was weak in dealing with mostly white leadership at One Police Plaza.
“He knows he is a punk—it’s not personal,” he said in describing Dinkins’s inability to get Black cops promoted into the top ranks of the police department because of reluctant white commanders.
To Adams, the shortage of Black leaders in the police department led to tolerance of police brutality against Blacks, including incidents that later defined Rudy Giuliani’s mayoralty — most notably, the brutal abuse of Abner Louima.
That crusading young cop was determined to confront injustice in the police department. His story began as a teen, when New York police officers beat him and his brother. He told me how a white cop kicked him so viciously that he urinated blood for weeks. Yet instead of turning away, becoming embittered or radicalized, he decided to fix the system by joining the police force.
I grew up in New York and identified with the scrappy Black kid from Queens who worked hard to make a positive racial change happen. In the years I have known Adams, I have always liked and admired him. And he has always made time for me as a journalist, granting interviews and sharing insights.
He won his mayoral primary by rejecting the far-left excesses—particularly the “Defund the Police” movement. He looked like a centrist Black Democrat, a budding national star.
But after facing bribery charges, he met with Trump and found safe harbor as Trump’s Justice Department ordered the charges dismissed. But the department is dismissing the case “without prejudice,” meaning it can be reinstated at any time — essentially holding a sword over Adams’s head.
It was painful to watch Adams publicly humiliated by Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. In a joint Fox News interview, Homan warned that he would be “up his butt” if Adams didn’t do Trump’s bidding on immigration.
It really is true: “The corruption of the best is the worst of all.”
Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for these Eyes: the Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”
