The lead prosecutor overseeing the landmark federal corruption case towards Mayor Adams has a status as a rogue and “cowboy” with a penchant for risk-taking, which may echo the ex-lieutenant’s tumultuous case. supervisor Brian Benjaminsources near Hizzoner mentioned.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York and a U.S. Military veteran who served in Iraq, has prosecuted a lot of high-profile federal fraud instances in recent times, profitable convictions towards a former Rudy Giuliani affiliate in addition to Adams ‘ mentee “Bling Bishop” Lamore Whitehead.
However these in Hizoner’s interior circle consider the prosecutor’s consolation with taking dangers and chasing his subsequent marquee scalp may undermine the explosive corruption costs towards the mayor — and repeat the federal lawsuit towards Benjamin, which Scotten additionally led .
“He is generally known as a cowboy who takes dangers,” a supply near Adams informed The Publish.
“[It’s] uncommon for this workplace and a real signal that the field may have holes, identical to Benjamin’s.
Benjamin resigned in 2022 after the feds accused him of taking marketing campaign donations from an actual property developer in alternate for funneling state funds to his nonprofit. He was charged with bribery, fraud and falsifying information.
A Manhattan federal choose finally dismissed the bribery costs, discovering there was no proof of a quid professional quo.
An appeals court docket overturned the choice in March that prompted Benjamin’s determination team to petition the US Supreme Court to hear the case.
“Whatever the final result of the enchantment, Brian Benjamin’s political profession is over,” the mayor’s attorneys wrote in a letter to Manhattan prosecutors as a part of a last-minute effort to drop legal costs towards Hizzoner this week.
“Mayor Adams will endure an analogous destiny if he’s indicted right here on proof that’s far much less conclusive.”
Scotten, in the meantime, briefly confronted warmth for feedback he made in the course of the federal legal trial of Lev Parnas, a Giuliani affiliate who was convicted and sentenced to twenty months in jail for conspiring with others to funnel $100,000 from Russian businessmen to 2018 political campaigns.
Protection lawyer Joseph Bondi argued that Scotten threatened to shoot him, though the prosecutor mentioned the remark was made in jest, which the choose agreed with.
Scotten additionally efficiently prosecuted Whitehead, who was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in jail on costs of fraud and attempting to make use of his connections with the mayor to extort a Bronx auto mechanic.
He additionally supplied a 50 month prison sentence for Charles McGonigalthe disgraced former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York, who pleaded responsible to conspiring to avoid US sanctions whereas conspiring with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
The SDNY and Scotten didn’t reply to requests for remark.
