“I will continue to do my job as mayor,” he said at a news conference, where some onlookers called on him to resign.
Turkey’s foreign ministry and president’s office and its embassy in Washington had no immediate comment.
Earlier on Thursday, federal agents searched the mayor’s Gracie Mansion home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to a Reuters witness. Around a dozen people in business attire were seen walking on the mansion’s grounds with briefcases and duffel bags.
Adams, a former police officer who rose to the rank of captain, is the first of the city’s 110 mayors to be criminally charged while in office.
He could be removed from office by Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul but the process is complicated, said Pace University Law School professor Bennett Gershman.
