New York City Mayor Eric Adams was charged with taking bribes and illegal campaign funding from foreign sources.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan alleges in the indictment that Adams "compounded his gains" from the illegal contributions by gaming the city’s matching funds program, which provides a generous match for small dollar donations.

FBI agents entered the mayor’s official residence and seized his phone early Thursday, hours before the indictment was made public. The indictment caps off an extraordinary few weeks in New York City, as federal investigators have homed in on members of Adams’ inner circle, producing a drum-beat of raids, subpoenas and high-level resignations that have thrust City Hall into crisis.

Speaking to reporters, Alex Spiro suggested federal authorities waved off his immediate surrender. He also accused them of leaking word of Adams’ indictment to the news media.

"We’ve known for some time that they intended to bring a case against the mayor one way or another," Spiro said, standing with Adams outside the mayor’s official residence.

Spiro said that after having had a chance to read the indictment, "you could almost picture them trying to cobble this together and try to tell a story so that they could say, ‘corruption, corruption’ at a press conference."

He criticized the indictment as a jumble of accusations and innuendo he said was "meant to mislead" the public about Adams. He argued that the conduct described in the charges either wasn’t illegal or didn’t involve the mayor.

The Turkish consulate was asking for "a courtesy," not payback, when it wanted Adams’ help in skipping a fire inspection, Spiro said, adding: "New Yorkers do this all the time." Adams said he’d see what he could do and, a few days later, ignored a follow-up phone call from the consulate, Spiro asserted.

"There is no corruption. This is not a real case," Spiro said.

Officials who enforce the city’s public campaign financing program and can impose penalties for violations say they’re reviewing Adams’ indictment.

"The allegations detailed in the indictment are very serious, for New Yorkers and for those of us working to make our elections more accessible, transparent, and accountable to our city," Frederick Schaffer, chair of the city’s Campaign Finance Board, said in a statement. "While the mayor is presumed innocent until proven guilty and deserves due process, the Board will nonetheless review all relevant information, including but not limited to the indictment, in order to uphold our city’s campaign finance rules and protect taxpayer dollars."

"No one is above the law, including the Mayor of New York City," the New York Democrat said in a statement. "The charges are serious, and the legal process should now play out speedily and fairly."

At a news conference, Adrienne Adams, speaker of the New York City Council and a fellow Democrat who isn’t related to the mayor, said she hasn’t begun considering potential removal of the mayor from office. She said people charged with crimes are presumed innocent and have the right to defend themselves.

But, she added, "I ask the mayor to seriously and honestly consider whether full attention can be given to our deserving New Yorkers who need our government to be sound and stable."

Asked about removing the mayor, Adrienne Adams responded, "We are of course, like I said, very troubled by everything that’s transpired. We are not prepared today to give an answer to that question. We will continue to monitor the situation, to be in talks with our colleagues both at city and state level as we all monitor the situation and see how this further unfolds."

Adams has often highlighted his working-class upbringing. He was one of six children raised by a single mother and has spoken of carrying around a garbage bag packed with his clothes because he feared his family would be evicted.

At 15, he was beaten by police officers after being arrested for trespassing, but the bruising encounter sparked a desire to change the system from within, he said. Adams joined the New York City transit police in 1984 and eventually became a New York Police Department officer when the transit department merged into the larger NYPD.

He rose to the rank of captain and was the co-founder of an advocacy group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, which sought criminal justice reform and denounced police brutality.

He retired from the police department in 2006.

The White House pushed back against claims by the New York City mayor that he was targeted because of his objections to the administration’s efforts to address immigration and border crossings, saying the actions by the Justice Department were independent of politics.

"The president was clear, even when he was running in 2020, that he was going to make sure that DOJ is independent and the DOJ is handling this case independently," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Thursday’s briefing.

Adams’ administration has been bogged down with attempts to house tens of thousands of international migrants who overwhelmed the city’s homeless shelters, with Adams at odds with President Joe Biden over funding and a strategy to handle the influx of new residents.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has the power to remove Adams from office, told reporters after an event Thursday morning that she had not yet read the indictment but would soon do so and then offer detailed comments on the charges.

"I’m going to take the time I need to review this indictment, see what’s embedded with this, but my number one responsibility is to make sure the people of New York City and state of New York are served," Hochul said.

Williams, a Democrat, would then schedule a special election.

In a statement Thursday, Williams did not explicitly call for Adams to step down but said "It is federal officials’ obligation to prove their case, it is the mayor’s obligation to prove to New Yorkers that there is a real plan and path to govern the city effectively and regain trust, and his time to show that plan is rapidly running out."

According to the indictment, Adams accepted tens of thousands of dollars in free flights and upgrades on Türkiye’s national airline for him and his companions, stays in luxury hotel suites, as well as other amenities such as a car and driver, boat tour, a Turkish bath at a seaside hotel and high-end restaurant meals.

In 2019, while exchanging text messages to plan another possible trip to Türkiye, an Adams staffer texted the then-Borough President, "To be o(n the) safe side Please Delete all messages you send me," according to the indictment.

According to prosecutors, Adams responded: "Always do."