From Rat Czar to Fishgate: The wild and weird moments of Eric Adams’ chaotic mayorship so far

Eric Adams has been hit with a string of federal criminal charges, including corruption and bribery, the first time in modern history for a sitting New York City mayor.

Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York unveiled a sprawling five-count indictment against Adams, accusing him of seeking and accepting “illegal campaign contributions to his 2021 mayoral campaign, as well as other things of value, from foreign nationals” on Thursday.

Adams is no stranger to controversy, however, having been the subject of multiple gaffes and meme-worthy moments since he took office two years ago.

Throughout his tenure as mayor, Adams has been locked in a fierce battle with millions of the city’s residents. «Everyone that knows me knows one thing: I hate rats,» he said at a press conference in October 2022.

Getting rid of rats has been somewhat of an obsession for Adams, with the city’s first ever “Urban Rat Summit” taking place earlier this month.

Last April, he appointed Kathleen Corradi as his right hand in the battle against rodents, known colloquially as “The Rat Czar.”

Corradi’s role was described as helping to «fight the real enemy — New York City’s relentless rat population.”

Earlier this year, Adams proudly hailed a “revolution” in waste disposal – a wheeled trash can.

Social media users were quick to mock the mayor, after he unveiled the rollable, black plastic trash can at a press conference and declared the city was taking “the next step forward in our ‘Trash Revolution’.”

“It’s some kind of wheeled bin, American ingenuity knows no bounds,” one user wrote on X in response to the clip, which showed Adams wheeling out the bin with Jay-Z’s Empire State of Mind blasting in the background.

This was Adams’ second