Brianna Suggs

Brianna Suggs has close family connections with Eric Adams’s inner circle. Ingrid Lewis-Martin reportedly refers to Suggs as her goddaughter, and her father, William Suggs, was a member of Adams’s mayoral transition committee. Suggs began working under Adams as a 19-year-old intern in 2017 and then as a $20-an-hour “community associate” in 2018 when she was a 20-year-old college student and Adams was Brooklyn borough president. 

Along the way, Suggs got her college degree from Brooklyn College. Then things got extra weird: As Adams launched his campaign for mayor, he named Suggs—then a 23-year-old with no campaign finance experience—to be in charge of his campaign finances. Recently, Adams has portrayed the move as part of a social-justice agenda: “Often, young African American ladies don’t get the opportunities that others receive in this business of politics,” he said. Adams’s 2021 campaign brought in more than $8 million in private donations. 

Not everyone was impressed with Suggs’s suitability for the role. “She’s like a kid,” one source told Politico, adding, “She’s not meticulous.” A source told the Post, “She’s a close person [to Adams and Lewis-Martin] who might not be qualified for the job, that was the vibe.”

Nevertheless, Suggs took the opportunity and ran with it. She made $50,000 working on Adams’s first mayoral campaign, and has made almost $100,000 over the past two years working for his reelection campaign. She made another $100,000 over that time as the sole fundraiser for a political action committee close to Adams, Striving for a Better New York. Adams steered donors to the PAC, whose stated purpose was to support Adams by backing state candidates aligned with his agenda. But after raising more than $1.3 million last year, the group spent more money on its founder, Brooklyn pastor and convicted interstate drug runner Rev. Alfred L Cockfield II and his charter school—than it did on political funding.

On top of her gig as Adams’s campaign rainmaker, Suggs raised cash for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, and registered as a lobbyist. In 2022, the lobbying firm 99 Solutions, run by real estate lobbyist Jacqui Williams, contracted Suggs to lobby Adams—her campaign boss—on behalf of the owners of the East Broadway Mall, according to state lobbying records.

Then, on November 2, FBI agents raided Suggs’s Crown Heights brownstone, seizing electronic devices and files and offering the public the clearest indication yet that Adams’s campaign was under federal criminal investigation. Subsequent reporting suggested that the feds were interested in alleged straw donors with possible ties to the Turkish government.

Suggs did not respond to questions posed through her professional website, LinkedIn, and her lawyer.

When the FBI raided Suggs’s home, Adams immediately cut short a visit to Washington, where he had planned on lobbying federal leaders to do more to help with the City’s migrant crisis. Adams told the press later that he came back because he wanted to comfort his young campaign finance manager after her traumatic experience, but, when pressed, admitted that he didn’t speak with her that day at all.

Regardless, Adams said he was sticking with Suggs. “I have full confidence in her,” he told PIX11 the next day. “She has done an amazing job. She will stay with the campaign team.” A few weeks later, Adams clarified that while Suggs was staying on with the campaign, she was no longer in charge of fundraising. In mid-December 2023, he clarified that her role on the campaign is to be “part of processing” the campaign’s “administrative paperwork.”

Suggs has not been charged with a crime, but she did come up frequently in the September 2024 federal indictment of Adams. 

Suggs, although not directly named in the indictment, is almost certainly the individual referred to by prosecutors as the “Adams fundraiser.” According to the indictment, she was present during multiple meetings where Adams met with Turkish construction company owners to discuss giving donations to the Adams campaign. While unnamed in the indictment, Erden Arkan, one of those construction company owners, pleaded guilty to making at least 10 straw donations to the 2021 campaign in early January of 2025. 

The “Adams fundraiser,” according to the indictment, was part of conversations meant to facilitate the use of straw donations for the 2021 campaign:

According to the indictment, Suggs accepted a free trip from Turkish officials, specifically a 2021 trip to Istanbul, which Adams facilitated through text. That trip included, per the indictment, free travel to and from the Istanbul airport, a free hotel room, and access to a VIP lounge at the airport. According to the indictment, she was given “a fake bill for the hotel stay, to allow Adams and the Adams Fundraiser to create the appearance that the Adams Fundraiser had paid for her hotel stay, when in fact, as Adams knew, she had not.”

Suggs is also alleged to have continued to facilitate straw donations while Eric Adams was mayor, in order to help fund his 2025 reelection campaign. According to the indictment, Suggs suggested to Turkish donors that they make their straw donations through intermediaries in advance of a fundraising event where Adams would meet with them. According to the indictment, she worked on the plan with another Adams staffer, who is almost certainly Rana Abbasova, to make sure the donations were not received on the eve of the fundraiser on September 20, 2023, but rather well ahead of that date. 

But at another fundraiser the two worked on, they dispensed of making sure that donations came in well ahead of time. The day before an October 9, 2023, fundraiser, the two worried that the fundraiser, which was hosted by Turkish PR officials and a Turkish magazine magnate, would not hit the $25,000 minimum that Adams demanded for him to make an appearance at fundraisers. Per the indictment, Suggs asked Abbasova via a text message, “Are they going to make the limit?” Abbasova responded, “Yes. They said as agreed we will collect the 25K.” “Ok perfect,” Suggs replied. 

On November 2, 2023, the day FBI agents raided Sugg’s home, as well as the homes of a few other Adams associates, the indictment described a frantic series of calls made by Suggs to Adams: 

After learning that FBI agents had arrived at her residence, but before answering their repeated knocks at her door, the Adams Fundraiser called Adams five times, even though the agents had not yet given the Adams Fundraiser any indication of the purpose for their visit,” the indictment said. “When the Adams Fundraiser then spoke with the FBI agents, she agreed to discuss many subjects, but refused to say who had paid for her 2021 travel to Turkey. As the FBI agents departed the Adams Fundraiser’s residence, Adams attempted to call the Adams fundraiser’s phone.

Adams told the press at the time that he made no efforts to contact Suggs during or after the FBI raid, and when he was frantically flying back from Washington, D.C., after canceling a meeting at the White House. 

In January 2024, two months after the FBI raid on Suggs’s home, it was reported that the Adams campaign had been paying her on commission, an unusual arrangement for a campaign fundraiser. Her cut amounted to almost 10 percent of the nearly $3 million dollars she brought in over an almost two-year period. 

Sometime in the spring of 2024, Suggs retained Henry Mazurek, a lawyer who has developed a specialty representing people caught up in government corruption investigations. Mazurek’s previous clients include Chaim Deutsch, the former New York City councilmember who pled guilty to tax fraud in 2021, and Hui Qin, a Chinese billionaire who earlier this year pled guilty to a straw donor scheme to make illegal contributions to a host of candidates for elected office—including Eric Adams.

Suggs is no longer the chief fundraiser for Adams, but she is still working for the campaign, and her exact role is unknown. What is known is that payments to Suggs continued to flow to her from Adams all throughout 2024. Suggs’s consulting firm was paid a total of $80,000 in 2024 by Adams’s 2025 campaign, including a flurry of payments in August 2024—a few weeks before Adams was indicted. 

What’s in Suggs’s future? With Adams’s charges on the verge of dismissal, it’s unclear if Suggs will ultimately be charged with any crimes. 

Still, like her godmother Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who is being prosecuted for corruption, Suggs is stuck in a deeply unenviable place. But like Adams, she might ultimately find her way out of hot water.