Michael Cohen and others argue that Frank Carone’s indictment over alleged bribes tied to a migrant shelter is an example of prosecutorial overreach that began during the Biden administration and reflects a pattern of weaponizing the justice system against political targets.
Former New York City chief of staff Frank Carone was indicted in June on allegations he accepted $120,000 in bribes connected to a migrant shelter contract. Prosecutors say Carone, while serving as Eric Adams’ chief of staff, pressured the city’s Department of Social Services to award a $6.8 million contract to a Long Island City hotel in exchange for the payments. The accusation centers on a relatively small sum compared with the overall deal and has drawn intense scrutiny from Carone’s defenders.
Carone’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, pushed back hard after the arraignment, insisting the probe began under the Biden administration and suggesting Carone was singled out. Aidala painted the case as unfair and procedural, stressing that Carone and his team were transparent with investigators. “Let’s just start off with the long day that he’s had to talk about how unfairly this whole prosecution is,” Aidala said. “Mr. Carone and his team have been in constant contact with the Department of Justice and this office from the very beginning and have taken extraordinary steps. Every time Mr. Carone left the jurisdiction for business purposes or family purposes voluntarily telling them where he was going and for how long.”
Aidala went on to question the factual basis of the indictment and accused prosecutors of building a case from inference rather than proof. “This indictment is based on assumptions. Assumption after assumption after assumption,” he continued. “We all know what happens when we assume.” He also attacked the depth of the scrutiny into Carone’s private life. “This is a perfect example of the government deciding on a target. They decided that Frank Carone was going to be a target, and they looked at every aspect of his life. They looked at his priest … they looked at his relationship with his priest,” Aidala said.
On the “When You Know You Know Unleashed” podcast, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and attorney Ethan Gerber discussed the case and connected it to what they view as a broader trend of lawfare. Cohen framed the charges as disproportionate given the dollar figures involved, arguing that the alleged $120,000 represents a tiny fraction of the $6.8 million contract. “I want to cut through all the noise,” Cohen said. “The government claims that Frank Carone risked his entire career and his freedom for a $120,000 kickback on a $6.8 million deal. Now, of course, I want to be clear that that’s less than 1.8 percent. Does that make any logical sense to you?”
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Ethan Gerber, who knows Carone from before his time in city government, underscored Carone’s established legal and business background to argue that the picture prosecutors paint is incomplete. “No, of course not,” replied Ethan Gerber. Carone used to be a partner at Gerber’s firm. “Frank Carone, before he was chief of staff, was an executive partner in my firm, which is a large firm. He was the President of the Brooklyn Bar Association at one point, he managed a mortgage bank. The man is a very, very wealthy man.”
Gerber described the origins of the investigation as rooted in tensions between the city and the federal government during the migrant crisis. He said officials in Washington were at odds with then-Mayor Adams over the handling of migrant flows and that scrutiny hardened thereafter. “The government attacked Eric pretty freaking hard,” Gerber said. “And it really started, if you think back around the time of the migrant crisis, when Eric was going up to Washington and he was trying to get the Biden administration on board about what was going on with the migrant crisis and sometimes saying not so nice things. But they really went after him in a big way.”
A key complaint from Cohen and Gerber is that the prosecutors assembled an indictment after an exhaustive probe that produced what they view as tenuous evidence. Gerber outlined how investigators spent years digging through Carone’s businesses and relationships and then highlighted what he called circumstantial leads. “So there seems to be this is what they found after three years of digging into every single facet of Frank Carone, of every business he was involved in, and he was involved in quite a few,” Gerber said. “And all the people he know and all the contacts he knew, they came up with this: somebody he knows wanted something out of government, wanted to apply, and eventually got it.”
Cohen emphasized how familiar the tactics feel, referencing his own legal ordeal to suggest a pattern of leverage and overreach. “We see federal prosecutors weaponize the Department of Justice through lawfare all the time,” Cohen continued. “They overreach, they stretch these novel legal theories, and they turn routine financial transactions into these multi-count federal indictments just to make a political point.” He tied the timing and focus of the probe to broader political pressures and past federal actions against figures aligned with the right.
Gerber and Cohen also criticized the significance prosecutors attached to certain texts and communications, arguing such snippets do not prove a criminal arrangement. “One of the interesting things about the indictment is it seems that the whole smoking gun here is that somebody texted somebody on who wanted to buy it. ‘Hey, maybe we can talk to Frank,'” Gerber said. Cohen added skepticism about another text prosecutors highlighted, calling it too vague to prove extortion. “Which to me is even more ridiculous than the one that you just mentioned. Where the DOJ relied heavily on some vague text where Frank says that he’s not happy until the past is worked out. I think they’re talking about some dollar amount.”
Outside of legal arguments, the discussion veered into the political stakes of the migrant crisis and federal responses, with Gerber and Cohen asserting that the case grew out of clashes between city leaders and the White House. “It’s sad that this is where we are right now in the criminal justice system. Why is Frank Carone a target? I don’t know. They’re not going to tell us that,” the conversation quoted. They warned that turning ordinary political conflict and routine business dealings into federal criminal cases sets a dangerous precedent.
Carone was released on a $2 million bond after his arraignment and his lawyers have pleaded not guilty while calling the indictment a product of overreach and political targeting dating to the Biden-era migrant crisis. The trial is scheduled for early May 2027 and the courts will ultimately decide whether the prosecution proves its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
