Can’t Make This Up: New NYPD Commissioner’s Home Raided for Possible Classified Documents

New York is called “The City That Never Sleeps.” It also seems to be the city that can’t catch a break with its leadership.

Federal agents searched the homes of NYPD interim commissioner Thomas Donlon a little over a week after he started the job, he said in a statement on Saturday night. He explained that on Friday, September 20th, the agents took items he had for about 20 years. He clarified the documents were not connected to his work with the New York City Police Department.
Donlon, who used to work for the FBI, said the search warrant has nothing to do with the NYPD and that the NYPD won’t be involved. Law enforcement officials say the search was for papers Donlon might have kept from his old jobs. They don’t think the search has anything to do with the current corruption investigations involving City Hall.
It’s just the latest hiccup for New York City Mayor Adams. Late Saturday night, Adams announced the resignation of his top lawyer, chief counsel Lisa Zornberg. Just days before, his police commissioner, Edward Caban, resigned under the pressure of multiple investigations of people in high-level positions within the Adams administration.
Caban’s phone and several other police officials’ devices were taken. According to a source, this was part of an investigation into a nightclub security business run by his twin brother. He resigned a few days later, saying that the recent news had become a “distraction for the department.”
Caban’s lawyers mentioned that he is not the target of any investigation and plans to cooperate fully with the government.
US attorneys in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York are also investigating other members of the mayor’s team.
Adams has been dealing with accusations of corruption and wrongdoing in his administration for months. According to a source, this started with a federal investigation into illegal campaign donations and corruption tied to Türkiye and foreign travel. As Adams prepares for his 2025 re-election, he faces at least four different federal investigations. Many New York Democrats expect these investigations to get even more intense in the coming weeks and months.
Investigators in the Southern District of New York have been investigating Adams and his administration for almost a year. Last November, the FBI raided the mayor’s chief fundraiser’s office. A few days later, Adams received a federal search warrant for his electronics. Things settled down for a while, but this month, the FBI issued search warrants and visited the homes of several people in Adams’s administration.
Multiple sources say the group included Sheena Wright, the city’s First Deputy Commissioner; David Banks, the Schools Chancellor; and Phil Banks III, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety. Investigators also issued a subpoena to Terence Banks, the youngest brother, who ran a lobbying firm that promised to help clients understand New York’s complex political and governmental system. Tim Pearson, a former NYPD officer and adviser to the mayor, was also part of the searches, according to sources close to the investigation.
Adams chose Donlon to be the interim NYPD commissioner on September 12. Donlon was New York’s director of the Office of Homeland Security, led the FBI’s National Threat Center, and worked with the FBI and NYPD on a team focused on stopping terrorism.
It’s unclear why the search happened so many years after Donlon left his government jobs. An FBI spokesman in New York didn’t comment about the search warrant or whether the documents they sought were classified.
The increase in investigations shows that Adans faces more political problems in the future. Adams, a retired police captain, won the city’s top job in 2021. Even before he became mayor, he enjoyed being in the national spotlight, calling himself the “face of the new Democratic Party.” After visiting the White House, he even said he was “the Biden of Brooklyn.”
Adams may have put the target on his own administration. He has been very vocal over the takeover of his city by Biden’s illegal immigrants. Biden ignored Adams, and now the FBI is ruthlessly dismantling his administration.
With the full power of the FBI descending on his administration, Adams’s political future is probably over. It’s proof that Democrats aren’t immune from the wrath of Biden – not even the self-described “Biden of Brooklyn.”

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