Vito Pitta

Vito Pitta has come up a lot in the news lately, as federal prosecutors zero in on donations to Eric Adams’s 2021 mayoral run, but his name has rung loudly in New York City politics and power for much longer. Pitta’s grandfather, also named Vito Pitta, was the longtime head of the powerful Hotel Trades Council (now the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, see entry on Rich Maroko). Grandfather Pitta immigrated from Sicily and rose in the ranks from a busboy at the Plaza Hotel to the top of the HTC, eventually retiring in 1995. Along the way, he was named in a racketeering indictment involving the Colombo family. (Charges were later dismissed.) His son, Vincent Pitta, co-founded the lobbying firm Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno and the law firm Pitta LLP, with Vito the younger now in line to take over the law firm (Vito works at the lobbying firm as well). 

Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno goes back years with Eric Adams. While he was borough president, the firm would often lobby Adams on behalf of multiple clients, like the correctional officers union and healthcare nonprofits. That lobbying was ongoing when, in 2018, Adams hired the Pitta LLC law firm as a political and legal consultant in the run-up to his mayoral campaign. During the 2021 election, Adams appeared to be the only candidate who hired the same people or consultants who were simultaneously lobbying him in his current office, something that one governmental accountability advocate said is technically legal but “stinks.” 

Adams was endorsed by two major unions representing transit workers and bus drivers—both of which just so happened to be clients of Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno. Vito Pitta and Jon Del Giorno, one of the co-founders of the lobbying firm, both gave the maximum donation amount to Adams, again at the same time that their associated law firm was on his payroll. According to the CITY, Vito Pitta was present at meetings where Adams was jostling for endorsements from the transit workers union, with Pitta acting as both lobbyist for the union and a campaign representative of Adams. 

“I thought it was weird at the time,” a consultant for a different campaign who was present at the meeting told the CITY. “He didn’t disclose that he works for Eric Adams.”

The Adams campaign did not return a request for comment.

Since the 2022 mayoral inauguration, the Adams campaign has paid Pitta, LLP more than $326,400 for “campaign consulting” and “compliance and legal” services, even as his lobbying work was ongoing. Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno also lobbies on behalf of Teamsters Local 553, and in 2022, Pitta Bishop & Del Giorno asked Adams to intervene in an ongoing labor dispute with United Metro Energy. The Teamsters paid the firm $76,500  for this and other lobbying work. (The strike remains ongoing). 

In addition to running compliance for Adams’s campaign, Pitta LLP is coordinating the legal defense fund meant to cover expenses arising from the federal criminal investigation of the Adams campaign. 

When Hell Gate first published the Table of Success in December 2023, we pointed out that this arrangement allows Pitta to “oversee yet another fundraising apparatus where supporters of the mayor can shower Adams (and perhaps, by extension, Pitta) with cash, while he continues to lobby the administration on major City issues.”

Since the fund was set up in November, it has raised at least $1.3 million from 450 people, including Frank Carone; former mayor Michael Bloomberg, Leo Blavatnik, several members of the Gindi Family, which is behind Century 21 department stores; and Jenifer Rajkumar. According to the latest filing, the fund has paid Pitta LLP $22,500 since November, which pales in comparison to the over $600,000 it has spent on lawyers from Wilmer & Hale for the mayor’s legal defense, a team that includes former City Hall Chief Counsel Brendan McGuire. 

The highlights of this defense fund so far? At least one weird event featuring women in tight red dresses collecting campaign donations (where very few people donated money). The fund also had to return donations to contributors who had business in front of the City, who are barred from donating to the defense fund. In January, Hell Gate pointed out that the fund had received donations from Trina Cayre and Sarah Cayre—Trina is married to Joseph Cayre, the billionaire behind the real estate company Midtown Equities, and Jack Cayre, Joseph’s son, is married to Sarah. Both Joseph and Jack Cayre appear in the City’s Doing Business Database, a clear violation of the rules set out for these types of legal defense funds. Pitta then thanked Hell Gate for pointing out these questionable donations, writing, “We appreciate you bringing this to our attention.” The Daily News subsequently revealed that a further $22,000 in donations had been returned, including $17,500 from four members of a family that runs Blake Partners, a real estate investment firm, that is also listed in the City’s Doing Business Database.

Then there’s what happened with Bo Dietl, a former NYPD detective, mayoral candidate, and Eric Adams’s longtime friend and associate, who was hired by Pitta to weed out improper donors to the defense fund. The defense fund paid Dietl just under $13,000 before he told a Politico reporter to “go suck somebody’s dick, because I don’t want to talk to you, OK? You like to suck dick? Go suck dick somewhere.”

The defense fund subsequently dropped Dietl, with Pitta saying that “the mayor believes that that language is unacceptable, and that no person should talk to another person in such a disrespectful way.”