Got yourself a dreaded case of the Mondays? Start your week off right by catching up on last week's episode of the Hell Gate Podcast. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
One of these is not like the rest: The fall of the Sasanian Empire, the construction of Stonehenge, the Battle of Thermopylae, and last week's indictments of several top Adams Administration associates on conspiracy and bribery charges.
Unless you're Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro.
Last Thursday morning, several of Eric Adams's closest friends, appointees, and associates appeared in court in their sharpest suits to defend themselves against charges of taking or giving bribes to pull levers in City government, in four wide-ranging and damning corruption indictments filed by DA Alvin Bragg.
But the very next day, Adams's second-in-command—former attorney Mastro—was already shooing it all off as "ancient history."
At an objectively insane press conference (even by Adams's standards) called by City Hall mid-Friday afternoon, the mayor and deputy mayor simultaneously praised those accused of riddling the City with corruption, while also distancing themselves from the allegations through twisting the definition of time itself.
"I'm not going to let ancient history that will play out eventually in a courtroom one way or the other be the way the work of this administration is described, because we are doing great things for New Yorkers and we're going to continue to do that every day," Mastro said at the Friday press briefing.