Forget the Mayor’s flawed veganism; the issue is his “mentorship” of an ethically dubious nightclub guy (and the friendship he didn't disclose when backing club)

I pitched this as a column/essay to a couple of publications, but they weren't interested. I'm surprised no NYC publication has addressed this issue.

The revelation by Politico that Mayor Eric Adams, despite claims to veganism, actually eats fish, spurred some punny news stories, fueled by Adams’s initial evasions—“I eat a plant-based centered life”—until he acknowledged, “I am perfectly imperfect, and have occasionally eaten fish.”

One reporter, responding to understandable skepticism of the pile-on, called it a “fun and accessible minor ‘scandal,’ but it also raises serious Q's about what to believe from Adams + team.”

Indeed, it compounds a record of evasions. But that’s not the major issue.

Rather, the main revelation in Politico’s initial story deserved more scrutiny: Adams’s dubious support of a friend with a “checkered past” who operated—or was that owned?—a scofflaw nightclub in Park Slope.

That friend, Zhan ‘Johnny’ Petrosyants, pleaded guilty to a federal money-laundering charge in 2014, as did his twin brother Robert.

Yes, Adams successfully managed the press conference, and, yes, has support in the polls--including the 54%-29% belief that he's "honest and trustworthy." And yes, policy issues are more important. 

But this shouldn't be ignored, even as City & State declared Adams one of the week's winners, in part because "the press frenzy over revelations that the vegan mayor sometimes eats fish turned a story about the questionable characters Adams dines with into dozens more articles about what he dines on."

Contradictions re the friendship

“They were introduced by mutual friends, at a time when Johnny was in the midst of a personal crisis,” Adams spokesman Maxwell Young said in statement to POLITICO. “Eric has a long history of helping people through difficult times, helping to turn their lives around, and the mutual friend thought Eric would be able to help. That continues to be the nature of their relationship — one of friendship and mentorship and support.”

Maybe Young, who initially told Politico that Adams doesn’t eat fish, is not the most reliable source. But his statement implies that Adams and Petrosyants have been tight for a while. Indeed, Petrosyants’ lawyer and spokesman Akiva Ofshtein told Politico that his client and Adams became friends more than a decade ago.

In 2017, by contrast, Brooklyn Borough President Adams’s spokesman Stefan Ringel told DNAinfo's James Fanelli and Leslie Albrecht that, despite claims that Adams had been friends with the twins before taking office in 2013, his relationship with them was "no different than” with others living or working in Brooklyn.

New light on Woodland controversy

That was relevant because Adams, without disclosing the friendship, had gone to bat defending Woodland, a restaurant/nightclub at the edge of Park Slope popular for a joyous, raucous “Black brunch” that also featured half-hour waits for the bathroom and bottomless mimosas, a plausible explanation for reports that some patrons used the neighborhood to relieve themselves.

At one neighborhood meeting, as I reported, Adams, the borough's first Black Borough President, told locals, “I’m not going to be closing people down because folks are saying, ‘I don’t like the way customers look.’"

“Vomit doesn’t have a racial tint,” responded one resident. “Y’know, if someone comes to my neighborhood and craps on my stoop, that’s not OK. And you should care about that.”

Instead, Adams doubled down, reflexively blaming neighborhood complaints on racism. During an August 2019 podcast (go to 1:13:55), Adams said of Woodland that “the people stand on line in an orderly fashion” and snarkily blamed neighbors who “probably just got there in a week.”

By contrast, one 15-year resident (who’s Black) stated in an affidavit, “We often hear and see very loud music, drunk and disorderly conduct… We also often see people standing in the line openly smoking marijuana.”

In defense, deflection

This week, when challenged about the friendship, Adams claimed kinship with Petrosyants, saying, “I don’t know if you know it, but I have a criminal history.” But Adams’s arrest (not conviction) as a 15-year-old for trespassing is hardly akin to operating medical billing companies paying claims to shell companies, using the names of students with special short-term visas.

That’s no one-off mistake. Rather, it's a greedy scheme—not unlike packing more people into a club than can be adequately accommodated.

“You would be surprised at the types of people that I mentor to put them back on track,” Adams said, adding that “if you inherit the belief that because someone did something they should be discarded forever, that is going to impact predominantly Black and Brown young men — not acceptable. I’m going to be there to sit down and mentor people.”

Put aside Adams’s strategic use of race to defend his white pal. But his “mentorship,” in the case of Woodland, avoided any attempt to mediate, or to recognize any possibility of fault on his friend’s part.

Adams, in the podcast, showed uncanny familiarity with the State Liquor Authority's (SLA) case against Woodland, saying the SLA was “taking it personally, the lawyer.” That referred to the clash between the SLA’s counsel and Woodland’s lawyer, the well-connected Frank Carone, another friend of Petrosyants’ (according to the Daily News), who has become Adams’s chief of staff.

More to question

Though Politico described Ofshtein as someone “who owns multiple restaurants that the twins have either managed or promoted,” evidence—including a campaign contribution, the restaurant company’s now-scrubbed web site, and an owner’s response on Yelp—suggests that twins were owners of Woodland, at least for a period.

"Petrosyants referred questions about his connection to the mayor to his attorney, Akiva Ofshtein, who owns multiple restaurants that the twins have either managed or promoted."

Or: evidence suggests the twins were *owners* but were not authorized by State Liquor Authority https://t.co/31G4BRpD94 pic.twitter.com/6sNVC1v2hN

— Norman Oder (@AYReport) February 5, 2022

When the State Liquor Authority cracked down on Woodland, Ofshtein produced a management agreement, as of April/May 2018, to show the twins had no ownership interest. But that didn’t address the issue of previous ownership. 

And SLA gathered ample evidence to pull the liquor license--more reason why Ofshtein should not be considered an unimpeachable source.

So much in this story deserves follow-up, including the Politico report—denied by Adams—that the mayor sleeps in Petrosyants’ Trump Tower apartment. Is it possible that's not a mentorship relationship after all?