A recent college graduate, Brianna Suggs was an unusual choice to run Eric Adams’s big-money fund-raising operation as he campaigned for mayor. When Eric Adams was running for mayor, he put Brianna Suggs, then 23, in charge of his fund-raising operation. The choice was unconventional: Eric Adams, the candidate who would go on to win the 2021 election for mayor of the nation’s financial capital, had picked an inexperienced 23-year-old to run his campaign’s fund-raising operation. Thanks in part to her work, the campaign would spend more than $18 million and win the election. On Thursday morning, federal agents raided Suggs’s home in Brooklyn and walked away with a wide range of materials, including three iPhones, two laptop computers and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.” The court-authorized search was part of an expansive public corruption investigation into whether the campaign conspired with the government of Turkey to receive illegal foreign donations. Neither Suggs nor Adams has been accused of any wrongdoing.
Adams has denied any knowledge of improper fund-raising, and said in a statement that his campaign would “work with officials to respond to inquiries, as appropriate — as we always have.” Ms. Suggs, now 25, has not spoken publicly since the pre-dawn raid, and could not be reached for comment. Interviews with nearly 20 people who know and have dealt with Suggs, most of whom requested anonymity so as to avoid alienating the mayor, portray an inexperienced young woman whose connections gave her access to the incoming mayor and his wealthy donors, a heady combination. Adams’s first mayoral campaign paid her more than $50,000 to manage its fund-raising. In the past two years, his re-election campaign has paid Ms. Suggs nearly $100,000 for fund-raising and campaign consulting services via her company, Suggs Solutions, according to city records. Suggs was also able to leverage her connections to work as a fund-raiser for a political action committee that aimed to advance Adams’s statewide agenda. In that position, she has earned another $100,000.
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