Who Among Us Hasn’t Really Wanted To Cooperate With An FBI Investigation But Forgot The Password To Our Phones?

I know Aftermath isn’t a local news blog (you can check out our pals Hell Gate and The New York Groove for that), but I am simply so full of excitement over the indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams that I need to shout it to the world. 

You probably don’t live in New York City, so there’s no need to go into who Eric Adams is and why he became mayor and all the dumb shit he’s done and said since. Suffice it to say that in the last few weeks, several of his closest allies have been investigated by the FBI and/or resigned, and all of us who live here have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which it did last night, making Twitter good again.

The indictment was unsealed this morning, showing that the investigation centers around claims, as Hell Gate writes, “ that Adams illegally accepted luxury travel from foreign governments, as well as illegal straw donations that resulted in him receiving more than $10 million in public matching funds for his 2021 campaign.” Adams has so far refuted calls to resign and seems to be claiming that the investigation is over him… standing up for New Yorkers too much?     

Anyway! Bits of the indictment are going around on social media, because it is very long and only politics sickos are going to read it all. One gem is this excerpt, wherein Adams claimed in an earlier investigation in 2023 that he really wanted to cooperate with the FBI, it’s just that he changed his phone password because of how much he wanted to cooperate, but then he forgot it.

The paragraph reads (emphasis mine):

On November 6, 2023, FBI agents executed a search warrant for the electronic devices used by ERIC ADAMS, the defendant. Although ADAMS was carrying several electronic devices, including two cellphones, he was not carrying his personal cellphone, which is the device he used to communicate about the conduct described in this indictment. When ADAMS produced his personal cellphone the next day in response to a subpoena, it was locked, such that the device required a password to open. ADAMS claimed that after he learned about the investigation into his conduct, he changed the password on November 5 2024 [sic], and increased the complexity of his password from four digits to six. ADAMS had done this, he claimed, to prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone because, according to ADAMS, he wished to preserve the contents of his phone due to the investigation. But, ADAMS further claimed, he had forgotten the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone.

We’ve all been there, right?

Update, 10/5/24: Incredibly, the phone is still locked.