Brianna Suggs

A recent college graduate, Brianna Suggs was an unusual choice to run Eric Adams’s big-money fund-raising operation as he campaigned for mayor in 2021. Thanks in part to her work, the campaign would spend more than $18 million and win the election. In October 2023 federal agents raided Ms. Suggs’s home in Brooklyn and walked away with a wide range of materials, including three iPhones, two laptop computers and a manila folder labeled “Eric Adams.” The court-authorized search was part of an expansive public corruption investigation into whether the campaign conspired with the government of Turkey to receive illegal foreign donations. Ms. Suggs started working as a $20-an-hour employee for Mr. Adams when he was the Brooklyn borough president in 2018. By fiscal year 2019, she was on staff, earning a salary of $52,500 a year. She graduated from Brooklyn College the following year, with a bachelor’s in business management. By the time Mr. Adams became mayor, she was earning nearly $80,000 in the borough president’s Office. Ingrid Lewis-Martin, who is now the mayor’s top aide. often referred to Ms. Suggs as her “goddaughter." Adams’s first mayoral campaign paid her more than $50,000 to manage its fund-raising. In the past two years, his re-election campaign has paid Ms. Suggs nearly $100,000 for fund-raising and campaign consulting services via her company, Suggs Solutions. She even worked as a fund-raiser for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, one of the largest Democratic organizations in the country.