The Adams administration has been over for nearly ten months, but its paperwork has not. On Monday, in a Manhattan courtroom, the first of its corruption cases finally goes to trial, and the defendant is the man who started it all: Eric Ulrich, the former Queens Republican council member whom Eric Adams made a senior adviser and then Commissioner of the Department of Buildings.
According to Politico’s New York Playbook, opening arguments are set for Monday, Oct. 19, and there will be no jury. Ulrich’s fate will rest with Acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel Conviser in a bench trial. It is an unusual choice for a defendant in a public-corruption case, and an intriguing one: the defense has evidently decided that a judge who has been living with this case for three years is a better audience than twelve New Yorkers who have been living with the Adams years.
Five indictments, one envelope
Some reminders, since it has been a while. In September 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unsealed five separate indictments alleging that Ulrich accepted or solicited more than $150,000 in bribes while in government, as City & State recounted. The alleged inducements had a certain Queens flavor: Mets season tickets, a bespoke suit, cash. Ulrich, who resigned as buildings commissioner in November 2022 amid reports of the investigation, has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The case going to trial first centers on Ulrich’s dealings with brothers Joseph and Anthony Livreri, owners of Aldo’s Pizzeria in Ozone Park, and towing-company owner Michael Mazzio. Prosecutors allege, per City & State, that Ulrich helped expedite building and health inspections for his co-defendants’ businesses and helped find a better-paying city job for Mazzio’s daughter, in return for direct payments and Mets season tickets worth thousands of dollars. The conduct runs from January 2021 to September 2022, spanning Ulrich’s last year on the Council, his stint as a mayoral adviser and his time at Buildings.
Then, in September, the case lost two of its defendants. The City Reporter reported that on Sept. 9, standing before Justice Conviser, the Livreri brothers pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges, the first guilty pleas in the case. Both admitted handing Ulrich $4,000 in an envelope to get rid of a Department of Buildings vacate order on a Brooklyn bakery. Their attorney, Jake Lasala, said outside court that they are not cooperating with prosecutors.
That is the line to watch on Monday. Two men have now admitted, under oath, to handing the defendant cash for an official favor. The defense’s theory has been consistent. Ulrich’s attorney, David Cohen, has said his client “routinely borrowed money from family and friends related to his gambling and paying bills. There was never any understanding or expectation on Mr. Ulrich’s part that he would perform any official act in exchange for the money he borrowed.” Asked about the brothers’ admissions in court, Cohen told The City Reporter: “I don’t think there’s anything to say about that.”
The gambling subplot
The indictment’s color is not limited to baseball. Prosecutors alleged, per The City Reporter, that the Livreris gave Ulrich money to fund gambling at public casinos and at an illegal club called the 89th Street Cafe, owned by Joseph Livreri. Ulrich had hired Joseph as a part-time aide on the Council and later pushed City Hall to hire him. When the Health Department shut Aldo’s for health code violations, prosecutors say, Ulrich arranged an expedited reinspection.
There is also the dinner. In August 2021, after Adams won the Democratic primary, the Livreris and Mazzio hosted a fundraiser at Russo’s of Howard Beach that raised $140,000 for the Adams campaign. Two days after Christmas that year, the brothers met with the mayor-elect and Ulrich at Aldo’s. Weeks later, Adams named Ulrich a senior adviser. Adams is not a defendant in any of the Ulrich indictments, City & State noted, but he appears in the narrative as the mayor-elect at the table.
A thinner docket than it once was
The prosecution arrives somewhat lighter than it left. In January, a judge dismissed the indictment that named developer Mark Caller as a co-defendant, finding, per City & State, that prosecutors had not presented the “full story” to the grand jury and lacked evidence that Caller tried to bribe Ulrich in the period described; the decision is in the official reports. The remaining indictments have no trial dates. Bragg’s office asked to try this one first because it was expected to be the longest, four to five weeks by the office’s estimate. It was originally set for Sept. 28.
The broader context will hover over the courtroom regardless. The Ulrich case was, as The City Reporter put it, “Round One” in a series of state and federal investigations that reached Adams’s inner circle, including Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Frank Carone and Jesse Hamilton, all of whom have pleaded not guilty and, as of September, said they intended to go to trial. Adams himself was indicted federally in 2024; that case was dismissed after the Justice Department moved to drop it, with Judge Dale Ho remarking that “everything here smacks of a bargain.”
What a judge will weigh
A bench trial strips away the theater. There will be no jury to charm with stories of a gambling problem, no twelve citizens to tire of a parade of DOB inspection records. Justice Conviser will have to decide whether the payments were loans to a friend with a habit, as the defense says, or the price of a commissioner’s attention, as the people allege, and whether the Livreris’ admissions, made without a cooperation agreement, settle the matter for the $4,000 envelope.
For the city’s political class, the trial is something else: a retrospective. It will be the first time evidence about how the Adams administration’s doors opened, and for whom, is tested in open court rather than in a press release. The verdict will be one man’s. The record will belong to everyone.
The City Politic has reached out to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and to Eric Ulrich’s attorney, David Cohen, for comment and will update this story with any response.
Photo: 100 Centre Street, home of Manhattan’s criminal courts. Kidfly182 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
Leave a Reply