A newly released accounting of expenses tied to Mayor Adams’ legal defense fund shows that six lawyers have so far worked on the matter, and that two of them began the same day the mayor’s top fundraiser was raided by the feds.
Of the six lawyers, the mayor’s former chief counsel in City Hall, Brendan McGuire, has logged the most hours, with 146.5 billable hours at $975 an hour. McGuire’s total billing so far totals more than $142,000.
The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the probe.
McGuire left his post in the Adams administration in the summer of 2023 to go into private practice with Wilmer Hale, the firm now working for Adams’ legal defense fund.
The fund, which was set up after it became public in November that federal investigators are probing ties between Adams 2021 mayoral campaign and Turkey, is required to file itemized expenses with the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, which provided those records to the Daily News through a Freedom of Information request.
So far, Wilmer Hale’s total legal billing for the fund is $395,177.
The investigation into whether the Turkish government funneled illegal contributions into the mayor’s 2021 campaign coffers has resulted in the feds seizing his electronic devices and the raids of Adams top fundraiser Brianna Suggs, City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova and Cenk Ocal, a Turkish Airlines executive.
The same day those raids occurred Adams abruptly returned to New York, cancelling plans to discuss the city’s migrant crisis with federal officials in Washington.
Adams launched the trust in mid-November and had raised about $650,000 as of mid-January.
Calls to Adams campaign lawyer Vito Pitta and McGuire were not immediately returned.
The expenses connected to Adams’ legal defense fund, which appear in the form of a Wilmer Hale invoice, show that on Nov. 2 — the same day that federal investigators raided the home of top Adams’ fundraiser Brianna Suggs — Adams’ legal team kicked into action.
That day, McGuire and Robert Boone, a partner at the firm, logged a total of 17.5 hours for a one-day bill of $17,062.50, one invoice shows.
The invoice shows that, aside from Boone and McGuire, Wilmer Hale is also using lawyers Boyd Johnson, Thais Ridgeway, Masha Goncharova and Masha Bresner.
Johnson and Boone are earning $975 an hour, while the rest of the attorneys are making $850 an hour. The expenses also include “computerized research” at $1,455, meal and transportaion disbursements and nominal printing costs.
