At a Harlem campaign event on Wednesday, a longtime confidante of New York Mayor Eric Adams reportedly attempted to hand a reporter cash hidden in a crumpled bag of potato chips — the latest embarrassment for an administration already engulfed in scandal.
The bizarre episode unfolded when Katie Honan, a reporter for THE CITY news website, attended the opening of the mayor’s newest campaign office.
There, she spotted Winnie Greco, a veteran Adams aide who resigned last year after the FBI raided two of her homes. Greco is now tied once again to controversy — this time for what appeared to be an attempted payoff.
According to THE CITY, Greco later approached Honan, asking her to meet across the street from the campaign office near a TD Bank.
The two walked together into a Whole Foods, where Greco handed Honan a partly opened bag of Herr’s Sour Cream & Onion ripple potato chips. Honan initially assumed it was an awkward offer of a snack. She declined more than once, but Greco insisted she keep it.
When Honan opened the bag minutes later, before entering a subway station, she discovered a red envelope inside containing a wad of cash — at least one $100 bill and several $20 bills.
The reporter immediately phoned Greco, insisting she could not accept the money and asking her to retrieve it. Greco demurred, saying she had already left the area, and later suggested they could meet “at some point in Chinatown.” Honan followed up by text: “I can’t take this, when can I give it back to you?” Greco did not respond.
Pressed by THE CITY afterward, Greco admitted she had made “a mistake” and offered repeated apologies. “I make a mistake,” she said. “I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry honey.”
Greco later phoned the outlet again, telling them to call her lawyer, Steven Brill, and pleading: “Can we forget about this? I try to be a good person. Please. Please. Please don’t do in the news nothing about me.” She added: “I just wanted to be her friend. I just wanted to have one good friend. It’s nothing.”
By Wednesday evening, Adams’s reelection campaign announced Greco had been suspended from her role.
The timing could hardly be worse for the mayor. Indicted in September on federal bribery charges, Adams faces allegations that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Turkey.
Those charges were ultimately dropped after President Donald J. Trump ordered the Justice Department to stand down. “I helped him out a little bit,” Mr. Trump remarked last month.
Even without the indictment hanging over him, Adams faces an uphill climb in his bid for reelection. Polling shows him trailing badly behind Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, who currently holds the lead.
For critics, the incident encapsulates a pattern of ethical lapses that has plagued the Adams administration. What was presented as a harmless bag of potato chips ended instead as another symbol of a mayor weighed down by scandal and slipping political fortunes.
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