Defense attorneys for Eric Ulrich sought to portray Adams’ former buildings commissioner as an honest public servant with money problems.

By Joe Anuta NEW YORK — The criminal case against a high-ranking aide to former New York City Mayor Eric Adams commenced Monday, kicking off what could become the first of several criminal trials touching Adams’ inner circle.

Manhattan prosecutors promised to unveil a web of wire taps, surveillance footage and financial records that will prove Eric Ulrich — a key campaign strategist, City Hall adviser and, briefly, the Department of Buildings commissioner for Adams — accepted bribes in exchange for performing official government action.

“We’ll prove Ulrich’s motive was simple,” Assistant District Attorney Guy Tardanico said. “He needed the cash.”Ulrich’s defense attorney argued his client was a dedicated public servant who helped anyone who asked and would never have spoiled a chance to operate at the top levels of city government — an opportunity afforded by his close relationship with Adams.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Ulrich is just one example of the corruption allegations that swirled around Adams and his administration for nearly the entirety of his one term in City Hall.

Two of the former mayor’s closest confidantes during his tenure are facing separate corruption cases, one being led by Bragg's office and the other in federal court. Numerous top officials had their phones seized or were otherwise the subjects of criminal probes. And Adams himself faced federal bribery charges in a now-defunct case that was dismissed only after unusual intervention from the Trump administration — a legal pall that caused Adams to drop his bid for reelection. Many aspects of the Ulrich case are not in dispute.

The former Queens Council member, according to both prosecutors and his defense attorneys, was a gambling addict who would spend much of his government salary at Resorts World Casino in Queens and at illegal card games. Both sides agree he would often ask friends to borrow money with little means of repayment.

Both the prosecution and defense also agree that Ulrich took several actions that benefited a co-defendant — the owner of a Queens towing company — and the owners of a Queens pizzeria who pleaded guilty last month to bribing Ulrich. But that’s where the overlap ends.

Prosecutors argued that a financially desperate Ulrich performed those deeds — which included speaking to top city officials about re-inspecting a Queens restaurant and a Brooklyn bakery and facilitating a city job interview for a friend’s daughter — in exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes along with season tickets to New York Mets games.

Prosecutors monitored a year’s worth of Ulrich’s phone conversations and reams of text messages that Tardanico said would illustrate how the co-defendants — Ulrich and Michael Mazzio, the owner of tow truck company called Mike’s Heavy Duty Towing — plotted their alleged scheme. Those claims, he said, would be bolstered by testimony from investigators and former government officials.

In response, Ulrich’s defense attorney delivered — with frequent objections from the prosecution — a lengthy oral history of Ulrich’s life and rise in politics that took on new prominence after a meeting with Adams, who brought Ulrich into the fold before becoming a leading mayoral candidate.

Through Ulrich’s connections and fundraising, according to his attorney David Cohen, Adams was subsequently able to secure enough votes from Queens to clinch his victory in the 2021 Democratic primary.

“In many ways, Eric Ulrich was the architect of Eric Adams’ mayoral victory,” Cohen said.

The two had such a close relationship, Cohen argued, that in 2022 Adams alerted Ulrich to a law enforcement investigation into illegal gambling that ensnared some of Ulrich’s friends — a heads-up Adams did not directly address when asked about it in 2022.

Ulrich did such a thorough job connecting Queens business owners with Adams and other top aides like Ingrid Lewis-Martin — who is facing a separate bribery case — that there was no need for Mazzio or others to bribe Ulrich at all, Cohen argued. A spokesperson for Adams confirmed Ulrich’s top spot in the former mayor’s orbit.

“Former Councilman Eric Ulrich was a valued member of the team that helped elect Eric Adams mayor,” spokesperson Todd Shapiro said in a statement. “His deep roots in Queens and strong community relationships were an asset to the campaign.”Ulrich’s attorney revealed Monday that around the same time the illegal activity allegedly began, the former lawmaker accepted a job as political director to a major New York City labor union — the District Council of Carpenters — but that the offer was rescinded after the organization received disqualifying information about Ulrich.

Cohen used the anecdote to illustrate that, with Ulrich seemingly on his way out of government, it made little sense to try to bribe him, though Ulrich would subsequently assume top positions in City Hall.

In essence, Cohen argued that Bragg’s office was conflating two facts about Ulrich’s life: That he would help anyone who asked — especially longtime friends including Mazzio and Joseph and Anthony Livreri — and that he also had a yearslong habit of borrowing money from many people he knew. There was never, he said, an explicit quid-pro-quo captured in any wiretapped phone conversations, which he admitted will contain plenty of explicit conversation that he characterized as “locker room” talk.

“[The state] will show you a moment when Eric helps someone and a moment when that person has lent him money and asks you to call it a bribe. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day,” Cohen said. “When a man helps everyone and borrows from everyone, the help and the loans will line up at times. That does not mean one caused the other.”