New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been hit with accusations by a woman who alleges in a $5 million lawsuit that he sexually assaulted her when he was working as a police captain in 1993.
The unidentified woman made her allegations in a summons filed on Wednesday night in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. She claimed that she was a co-worker of Adams at the time of the alleged incident. The summons named Adams, the New York Police Department, and the NYPD Guardians Association as defendants in the case.
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Adams told reporters on Thursday that he did not recall ever meeting his accuser. “I would never harm anyone in that magnitude,” he said. “It did not happen.” He added, “That is not who I am. That is not who I’ve ever been in my professional life.”
The plaintiff, who is seeking $5 million in damages, filed her case under a 2022 state law that enables alleged victims of sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations has expired to file civil lawsuits against their supposed attackers. The deadline for filing such suits regarding outdated allegations is Friday.
The woman’s lawyer, Megan Goddard, praised her client for having the guts to sue the mayor. “Coming forward is not an easy thing to do, especially against a powerful person, and I am in awe of the strength of the women who have the courage to do so,” she told The Daily Beast.
The summons offered no details on the alleged assault or identify what job the accuser held in city government. The NYPD Guardians Association is a fraternal organization for black police employees. Adams was 33 years old at the time of the alleged incident.
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The lawsuit creates another layer of legal trouble for Adams at a time when the FBI is probing whether his 2021 mayoral election campaign conspired to receive illegal donations from the Turkish government. Federal investigators reportedly raided the homes of two aides to Adams earlier this month and seized cellphones from the mayor last week.
Adams has clashed with US President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, over the federal government’s handling of an illegal immigration crisis. With migrant crossings at the southern US border surging to an all-time high, Adams has warned that an ongoing influx of illegal aliens “will destroy New York City.”
“Where the heck is the president of the United States?” Adams asked in a May television interview. “That is a good question, and I think we all should be asking why this is happening to a city that was turning itself around and will continue to do so.”
The New York Post speculated in an editorial earlier this month that the Biden administration is trying to “inflict maximum embarrassment” on Adams as retribution for criticizing the president’s border policies.