Following in Eric Adams’ footsteps, Antonio Reynoso started doing things outside of his local position when he became the borough president of Brooklyn. These efforts included international interactions.
He conducted as many as two or three meetings a week in response to requests for meetings from foreign consulates. He consented to conduct ceremonial ceremonies honoring the national history of their nations when invited to do so by consular authorities and local leaders.
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But Reynoso said that his suffering increased with time. Simple presents had arrived from overseas consulates: a bookmark and a bottle of wine. However, Turkish authorities subsequently started to become more giving.
They asked Reynoso to fly the flag of their homeland over Brooklyn Borough Hall and promised junkets to Turkey. There were ten tea sets received, each plated in gold by the Turkish consulate. According to Reynoso, he promptly gave them back.
In March 2022, Reynoso corresponded with Reyhan Özgür, the former Turkish consul-general in New York, “As much as we are grateful for these gifts, I have been advised by my counsel that I must return them to you.”
Reynoso met with FBI officials shortly after, at the recommendation of the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs, and they cautioned him against dealing with representatives of certain foreign nations, such as Turkey.
Adams was accused of five charges of fraud, conspiracy, bribery, and requesting political donations from the Turkish government in a 57-page federal indictment. The gifts and promises of free travel from Turkey appear to fit the pattern this pattern describes.
Adams was charged in the indictment, which was made public last week, with getting over $100,000 in rewards for opulent travel and with obtaining illicit campaign donations from Turkey, which allowed him to be disqualified for matching money. Prosecutors said that the mayor gave political favors to Turkish officials in exchange.
Özgür, the person who gave the presents to Reynoso, was a key player in the indictment of Adams. He was charged with assisting in the arrangement of the mayor and his allies free and discounted flights on Turkish Airlines as well as enabling the unlawful straw donations for Adams’ campaign from foreign nationals.
According to the indictment, Özgür allegedly requested that Adams exert pressure on the Fire Department to permit the opening of the new Turkish high-rise embassy in midtown Manhattan before the visit of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2021.
Adams has refuted any misconduct. However, it appears that he first showed kindness toward Turkish authorities while serving as borough president, since he took free or heavily reduced tickets to India, France, Turkey, Sri Lanka, China, Hungary, and Ghana on Turkish Airlines, which is mostly controlled by the government.
In an interview conducted before Adams’ indictment, Reynoso stated that he did not regret Adams’ decision to prioritize certain issues while in office. Many borough presidents maintain their relationships with local consulates to establish a connection with their constituents. The junkets and flag-raising ceremonies were a staple of Adams’ borough presidency, a practice he has continued as mayor. As of this month, Adams has held more than 80 flag-raisings, honoring nearly 50 countries, sometimes twice.
Reynoso, however, claimed that he discovered that responding to the outreach from foreign authorities—particularly the ceremonial flag-raising was a time-consuming diversion.
Reynoso stated, “It was every single week, we had a new request, and sometimes twice a week, and we were just doing these flag-raisings, and it consumed a significant amount of my operations time.”
He spotted the flag-raising merry-go-round’s departure ramp and grabbed it right away.
Ten months into Reynoso’s presidency, in October 2022, the opportunity finally came to pass. The demand for flag-raising became so great that Reynoso went to the mayor’s office of foreign relations to request a meeting.
Documents indicated that one of the people expected to be present at the meeting was Edward Mermelstein, the commissioner of the office. The director of protocol for the office, Rana Abbasova, whose house was searched in November before she started assisting the FBI and federal prosecutors, was not on the list of people expected to attend.
Officials from City Hall informed Reynoso at the meeting that, technically, flying foreign flags at Borough Hall was against the law, something that Adams had disregarded in his capacity as borough president.
Reynoso had managed to escape. He turned down a request in January of that year from the St. Lucian embassy to raise the national flag at Borough Hall, as the nation had done the year before.
Reynoso sent an email to St. Lucian authorities, “We were recently reminded by the Mayor’s Office of International Affairs that as a city-owned government building, Brooklyn Borough Hall is unable to raise flags of any foreign nation over it.”
“Please note that flag-raisings are taking place with the mayor in Downtown Manhattan.”
Reynoso received an email from Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the mayor’s main adviser, shortly after the change in Brooklyn and quickly traveled across Caribbean consulates.
Lewis-Martin wrote, as per email correspondence that The New York Times was able to get under the Freedom of Information Law, “The Office of International Affairs and I have received a bunch of calls asking why the mayor has prohibited flag raising on city office buildings
Lewis-Martin noted, “Please let your team know that the law which prohibits flag raising on city buildings is a New York State law and not under the jurisdiction of the office of the mayor.”
Adams was not the first Brooklyn borough president to pursue diplomatic ties with other nations; Marty Markowitz, the president before him, claimed to have done the same and found no issues with the arrangement, which he said aided in his efforts to build rapport with the borough’s diverse communities.
“What possibly could I be pressured to do?” Markowitz stated in a pre-indictment interview with the mayor. “What power does a borough president have?”
However, Markowitz was hit with a $20,000 fine in 2011 by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board for allowing his wife to fly for free on three foreign government-funded business trips abroad, two of which were to Turkey.
Reynoso was urged by the international relations office to meet with the FBI to discuss appropriate procedures for interacting with foreign authorities. And he carried it out.
Reynoso’s chief of staff found notes from FBI agents that said Reynoso should avoid dealing with officials from China and Turkey, among other nations, and that offers of travel to other countries carried the most danger. As the president of the Brooklyn Borough, Adams traveled to China and Turkey.
He was forewarned by the FBI that foreign nations would target local authorities in the hope that such officials would eventually move up the political ladder. They advised him to avoid accepting presents from foreign consulates as they may be bugged and used as pressure.
Additionally, they cautioned that foreign spies sometimes pose as diplomats or entrepreneurs and that political operatives from those nations shouldn’t be left alone in city offices because they may place listening devices.
According to a source with knowledge of the FBI’s visit and talks with Reynoso and his staff, as well as other gatherings given to state and local government representatives and corporate executives, these were standard “defensive briefings” designed to lessen what the FBI refers to as hostile foreign influence.
Reynoso’s particular briefing as well as the standard procedure were not addressed by a representative of the FBI office in New York.
Reynoso stated he had issued certain security directives following the meeting. He ordered personnel to take out a computer from the waiting area and gave instructions stating that visiting dignitaries should never be left alone in the office. Recent arrivals’ asylum petitions are processed in an area that was formerly utilized for refreshments following flag-raising ceremonies.
Reynoso’s office still has gifts under $50 on display, but even those attracted criticism.
“We went back and checked every single gift we received from a foreign country,” Reynoso stated, “to make sure it was not bugged.”
