In the autumn of 2023, as the warm summer breezes began to fade, Jocelyn Strauber, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, detected a distinct chill emanating from the office of Mayor Eric Adams.<\/p>\n
Strauber had been nominated for the job by Adams. But as the head of the agency charged with investigating municipal corruption, she was committed to DOI\u2019s longstanding tradition of independence from City Hall, one that dates back to its inception during the legendary scandals of Tammany Hall.<\/p>\n
In her first years on the job, Strauber was able to communicate and meet with the highest levels of the Adams administration, including the mayor himself. That changed in September 2023, when multiple criminal investigations into the administration began to break into public view.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point those meetings stopped. Or they certainly became, to the extent that those meetings were warm and cordial, they became less so,\u201d Strauber said during an interview last week with THE CITY.<\/p>\n
With no word from Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> on whether he\u2019d keep her in the job, Strauber exited on Jan. 17, leaving behind an extraordinary track record as the first DOI commissioner in history to run a corruption investigation that led to the indictment of the mayor himself. The last time a sitting mayor faced such charges was in 1871, two years before the formation of what was then called the Office of The Commissioners of Accounts, now known as the Department of Investigation.<\/p>\n Confirmed by the City Council in January 2021 immediately after nomination, Strauber arrived at DOI to learn to her surprise that her own agency and the FBI had begun investigating the mayor a few months earlier \u2014 before Adams was even elected. A former prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney\u2019s office, Strauber was now overseeing a behind-the-scenes investigation of the man who had appointed her.<\/p>\n The allegations were diverse. Bribery. Kickbacks. Campaign finance fraud. Already, the phone of a campaign supporter Adams would later appoint building commissioner was being secretly recorded. In the coming months, the FBI and DOI would obtain dozens of search warrants and confiscate phones of the highest levels of the mayor\u2019s administration. Targets would ultimately include Adams\u2019 Chief Advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, her husband, Schools Chancellor David Banks, his brother, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Philip Banks III, Police Commissioner Edward Caban and a half dozen other senior mayoral aides.<\/p>\n At first, the existence of the growing investigations remained entirely out of the public\u2019s view.\u00a0<\/p>\n Strauber, meanwhile, communicated on a regular basis with City Hall, at first with First Deputy Mayor Wright and the mayor\u2019s general counsel, Brendan McGuire, who had urged Adams to hire her. In early 2023, she began direct conversations with the mayor himself.<\/p>\n \u201cWe decided, you know, this position has a direct report to the mayor. There\u2019s no reason you can\u2019t sit down and have a meeting with the mayor. It\u2019s good for him to understand generally what the office needs and what it does,\u201d she said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be isolated from him.\u201d<\/p>\n In the spring of 2023, as tens of thousands of asylum seekers flooded New York City\u2019s already overburdened shelter system, Strauber attended a meeting with Adams and other top aides. During that meeting, she recommended that DOI hire an independent monitor to oversee the growing number of no-bid emergency contracts the administration was awarding to handle the wave of migrants.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mayor,\u201d she said, \u201cwas very receptive to that ask.\u201d Soon after, DOI hired the accounting firm of KPMG to begin monitoring all migrant-related contracts. (The firm\u2019s final report has yet to be issued).<\/p>\n \u2018Outsiders Now\u2019<\/p>\n Then the winds began to shift.<\/p>\n On the afternoon of Sept. 23, 2023, Strauber stood next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a press conference announcing<\/a> a sweeping indictment of Adams\u2019 building commissioner Eric Ulrich on bribery charges spanning his role in City Hall and his previous job as a City Councilmember. Ulrich had allegedly accepted cash and Mets tickets to do favors for, among others, a developer and a tow truck firm owner<\/a>. (Ulrich pleaded not guilty to all charges).\u00a0<\/p>\n During the press conference, Bragg made clear the investigation was ongoing. Strauber declared, \u201cWe will pursue bribery at any level of New York City government to the full extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that the Ulrich matter wasn\u2019t the end of Adams\u2019 troubles became clear early in the morning of Nov. 2, 2023, when the mayor suddenly canceled meetings in Washington, D.C. and flew back to New York City after the home of his campaign treasurer, Brianna Suggs, was publicly raided by DOI and the FBI<\/a>.<\/p>\n The cold, hard truth arrived a week later when law enforcement approached Adams after a speaking engagement in Greenwich Village and confiscated his phones<\/a>. From there, while some high-level City Hall officials continued to respond to the agency, overall communications between DOI and City Hall changed dramatically.<\/p>\n \u201cTo the extent there had been opportunities to get the administration\u2019s support on things that we wanted to do, it was going to be much more difficult,\u201d Strauber told THE CITY. \u201cIt was more of an internal sense I had, \u2018OK, we\u2019re going to really be outsiders now\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n This shift in dynamic was in many ways a predictable result of the independent role DOI has always embraced.<\/p>\n Speaking with THE CITY, former DOI Commissioner Mark Peters says he experienced this dynamic shift first-hand when DOI investigated the man who appointed him, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and determined that he had violated city ethics rules by directly soliciting six-figure donations from individuals and lobbyists seeking favorable treatment from his administration for a non-profit he controlled. (De Blasio was investigated by the Manhattan U.S. attorney and DA, but was not charged with any crimes).<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re asked to investigate City Hall, when you get information suggesting there\u2019s wrongdoing, you have to do it, but it can create some awkward moments,\u201d Peters said. \u201cIn theory, DOI should just do the investigation, and the mayor should leave you alone. But mayors, being human, can often be very unhappy about this. That doesn\u2019t stop you from doing your job, but it creates pressure on doing our job.\u201d<\/p>\n From Strauber\u2019s position, each investigation was based on the facts, and the agency was obligated to pursue those facts wherever they may lead.<\/p>\n \u201cI understood coming here that that was my job \u2014 to participate in investigations to the fullest extent that the facts bore them out. And that\u2019s what we did,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo yes, there was a time early on that I realized that this case [against Adams] was going to move forward. There was a point when we seized the mayor\u2019s phones, and I appreciated that my relationship with the mayor and this administration was going to be totally different going forward. And that was sort of a moment of realization that this job was going to be less of a collaboration and partnership to prevent corruption in the city than perhaps it might have been.\u201d<\/p>\n Adams\u2019 indictment, she noted, \u201cmay be extraordinary in terms of the history of this city, but I think as a prosecutor it was something I was prepared to do because that is what the job required.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018New Yorkers Expect Better\u2019<\/p>\n