Former Adams Aide Pleads Guilty in Corruption Investigation

Mayor Eric Adams’s former chief Muslim community liaison, who was charged with instructing witnesses to lie to F.B.I. agents conducting a sweeping corruption investigation into the mayor, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiring to commit wire fraud.

The liaison, Mohamed Bahi, was arrested in October, one month after the same investigation led to the mayor’s indictment. The Trump Justice Department abandoned the case against Mr. Adams in April over the objections of Manhattan prosecutors, but the case against Mr. Bahi, identified as one of several co-conspirators, has languished for the 10 months since he was charged.

Mr. Bahi was not the first person to plead guilty in the case. A Turkish American businessman, Erden Arkan, was separately charged by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District for his involvement in the scheme with Mr. Adams. He pleaded guilty to the same charge of wire fraud conspiracy earlier this year.

Prosecutors said the charges against Mr. Bahi and Mr. Arkan stemmed from their involvement with illegal contributions to Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign for mayor. In the plea hearing on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Bahi told Judge Dale E. Ho that he knew that his actions were wrong.

Mr. Bahi helped organize a fund-raising event in December 2020 for a construction company in which the employees were “reimbursed by the owners for their campaign contributions,” he told the judge.

“I understood the Adams campaign would then seek matching funds for their contributions,” he said.

Mr. Bahi’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 18. Under his plea agreement with the government, he faces a possible sentence of probation to six months behind bars and agreed to a $32,000 restitution payment.