NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Ingrid Lewis-Martin Indicted on Bribery and Conspiracy Charges and NJ Transit Names New Leader

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

WNYC’s Janae Pierre and Brigid Bergin discuss the indictment of Mayor Adams’ former top aide, Ingrid Lewis-Martin. Plus, WNYC’s David Furst and Clayton Guse look into questions swirling about the appointment of NJ Transit’s new CEO.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Jenei Pierre. Mayor Eric Adams' former chief advisor is facing charges of bribery and money laundering. The accusations against Ingrid Lewis Martin are part of an indictment unsealed Thursday by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Her son, Glenn Martin II, was also charged, along with two real estate investors. Lewis Martin becomes the second most high-profile person in the Adams administration, aside from the mayor himself to be charged with a crime. For more on this breaking news, I'm joined by WMYC's senior politics reporter Bridget Bergen.

Now, Bridget, this indictment is no surprise. Ingrid Lewis Martin had just resigned from her post on Sunday expecting this move. So tell us what's in this indictment. At a press conference with District Attorney Alvin Bragg, he laid out the charges against Louis Martin in three words. Quid pro quo. Specifically, she's charged with conspiracy, bribery and money laundering.

Prosecutors are saying that she used her position in City Hall pretty much from the moment she had it to influence and get favors for people. She helped expedite two construction projects for two businessmen who are also charged in the case. Whenever these individuals needed help with something through the Department of Buildings, they would reach out. She set up a way for them to reach her through a encrypted messaging app signal. and then when they needed to get things moved along on their projects,

she would reach out to the Department of Buildings and help move those projects along. In exchange for that, her son, in a joint bank account that she shared with him, received significant cash payments. And there were also efforts to help support some of his other endeavors. The district attorney talked about a car, a Porsche that he was able to buy with some of the cash that came from. this exchange between the businessman and Ingrid Lewis Martin, as well as a fashion line that they were

allegedly supporting a Chick-fil-A franchise that they were going to help him acquire, as well as some luxury goods that they didn't specify in detail. I want to talk more about her son, Glenn Martin II. He was named in this indictment and also charged. Tell us more about that. Well, he acted as an intermediary between Ingrid Lewis Martin and these businessmen and helped you know, facilitate the meeting and helped curry messages between her and between these businessmen on these projects that he was working on. So he is also charged with money laundering,

conspiracy, and bribery in this case. Wow. So what's Lewis Martin's reaction to all of this? Well, we haven't heard a reaction from her yet, but we know earlier this week she had a press conference. We anticipate she will be fighting these charges and she will be arraigned on Thursday. But But at this point, that's as much as we know. We anticipate that she will be pleading not guilty. So she'll be arraigned on Thursday. What's next here? Well, it's not totally clear.

But I think one point, Jeney, that's really important to make and DA Bragg made this point is, you know, we have talked a lot about the criminal case connected to Mayor Adams. That is a federal case. What we're talking about today is a state case. This is not a federal case. This is through the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. and D.A. Al-Brague made the point that the mayor is not a target of their investigation. He also didn't want the charges against Ingrid Lewis Martin to disparage the hard work of other city workers that he, you know, noted were helpful in this case. He actually announced these charges along with Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Stryber, and her department was very involved in this case.

And he also wanted to say that, you know, he acknowledged how prosecutors have been. and attacked as of late for going after some of these public corruption cases. And he really just wanted to salute the members of his own office who are doing this important work, sometimes in the face of some pretty harsh criticism. That's WMYC's Bridget Bergen. In a comment, Lewis Martin's attorney called the charges preposterous. All four defendants are pleading not guilty. Up next, we hop over to the Garden State where New Jersey Transit is getting a new leader.

More on that, after the court. break. You're listening to NYC now. Leadership change is underway at New Jersey Transit. The agency's longtime CEO, Kevin Corbett, is stepping down from his position. He'll be replaced by an official with a long record of working on transportation issues, who is also tied to the criminal indictment of South Jersey political boss, George Norcross. For a look at what's next, my colleague David First talked with,

WMYC's Transit and Infrastructure Editor, Clayton Gusa. Clayton, let's talk about the big picture here. New Jersey Transit has been dealing with significant problems for some time. Equipment issues have regularly shut down service to Penn Station in recent months. Back over the summer, things got so bad that the agency instituted this one-week fair holiday to give everyone free rides and maybe make up for some of that stuff. What does this latest shake-up at the top mean for the year? agency. Right. I mean, there's a few ways to interpret this, right? Kevin Corbett was brought in seven years ago

as Phil Murphy's guy. Murphy had campaigned on improving New Jersey Transit, making things better when things were in a really bad shape, and he brought in Kevin Corbett to kind of lead that charge. You know, like a lot's happened over the last seven years at NJ Transit. The pandemic happened in the middle of it that really affected ridership and the revenues that the agency brought. brings in. But now Corbett's leaving it's Murphy's last year in office, and the state of the system is not so much better than it was when Murphy first entered. And that's in, you know, Corbett gets some credit for managing the system and running service with the resources that he had. But he was not given, you know, a large degree of state tax revenue to fund construction upgrades and projects

like New York's MTA has. They didn't hike the fair. They did their first fair hike in nearly a decade over the summer, and it was really jarring to commuters because to make up all that lost money, they needed to raise fares by about 15%. So it's kind of coming at this tenuous moment for the system and also is coming in Murphy's last year in office when, you know, seven years after he campaign promising to improve the service for New Jersey transit riders. Well, let's talk about who is coming in to replace him. Right. Chris Killurion. He just resigned earlier this year as CEO of the Gateway program. A lot of people might know that as the project that is building two new Hudson River tunnels, the first and more than a century, between Manhattan and New Jersey, in an effort also to repair the

old ones. There's a lot of other projects involved in it. It is effectively the largest public works project in the country, one of them. And Chris Clury oversaw that project for two years. He secured more than $7, $8 billion of federal grants for the work. There were some of the largest federal grants ever given for a transit project in the history of the country. And he also has transportation bona fides. He was New Jersey State Transit Commissioner back from 2006 to 2008. But here's the but. In between those jobs, he was closely tied to George Norcross, who many of our listeners

might know as the South Jersey political boss. He's brother of New Jersey Congressman Donald Norcross. But George Norcross, along with his other brother, Philip, is facing an indictment for racketeering and corruption and really corrupting the Camden and South Jersey government. Well, you detailed a lot of qualifications for Chris Killory, but can you explain that connection to Norcross? So what we know is, and our newsroom is reported on this quite a bit, a lot of it's laid out in the Norcross indictment.

One thing that's not, and it's, you know, you can see it on Chris Killary's LinkedIn, is that he used to work for Philip Norcross, one of the brothers who was indicted. He then worked a series of positions that are kind of laid. out in this Norcross indictment. Calerie is not charged in that, let's be clear, but he is listed as quote, individual one, an unindicted kind of, not co-conspirator, but involved party in this scheme to kind of exploit taxpayers in South Jersey that the Norcross brothers are accused of. Now, Chris Calerreys never been charged. He does have government bona fides. A lot to sort out there, and I guess we'll hear more as the indictment moves along. Yeah, exactly. Well, what does Governor

Murphy saying about all of this. The governor was on our air for his monthly segment with Nancy Solomon, asked Governor Murphy. And she asked him about these concerns, very point blank. And Murphy, he didn't, you know, bother to address him at all. He kind of acted like New Jersey Transit as getting the world's greatest transportation official. Calori is a transportation megastar. People cannot believe that we got Chris to come in to run this thing for the last year of our administration. But the key part of that sentence there is the last year, you know, as we've alluded to, Murphy's out of office at the end of 2025. He can't run for another term. And he came in vowing to save New Jersey transit. He has one more year to do that. It's an uphill battle. So Kaleri's slated to be in charge. He has

this baggage, but he also has a record of being an accomplished transit professional. I mean, New Jersey commuters are going to really see whether or not Murphy's able to use this man to make good on that promise in the next year. That's WMYC's Transatl's and infrastructure editor Clayton Gusser, talking with my colleague David First. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day. I'm Jene Pierre.

We'll be back tomorrow.