Adams, ally attack former commissioner's mental acuity in response to suit as Donlon cries foul

Yahoo

19-07-2025

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams told a group of business leaders privately Thursday night that he asked former interim Police Commissioner Thomas Donlon to obtain a medical evaluation and when the former federal agent refused he 'had to let him go.'
A day earlier, responding to Donlon's explosive lawsuit alleging Adams allowed NYPD top brass to operate as a 'criminal enterprise,' the mayor called Donlon a 'disgruntled former employee' but didn't mention any health concerns.
The new tack — questioning Donlon's mental acuity — mirrors that of former NYPD spokesman Tarik Sheppard, who claimed to WPIX Thursday morning that Donlon was experiencing 'some cognitive issues.'
Donlon's lawyer, John Scola, told the Daily News there is no record of a medical request by the mayor and said he is preparing a defamation lawsuit against the mayor and Sheppard.
'The Mayor's evolving narrative is as dishonest as it is defamatory,' Scola said. 'If Commissioner Donlon was truly 'off' or suffering from cognitive issues, why did Mayor Adams immediately appoint him to a Senior Advisor role at City Hall? These claims are false, malicious, and will be addressed in court.'
Donlon told The News in an interview Thursday, referring to Sheppard, 'He's just grasping at straws, it's pathetic. Of course he's defaming me.'
Donlon, a former federal agent who served as police commissioner last fall, sued Mayor Adams and top current and former NYPD officials earlier this week, alleging they operated a 'corrupt enterprise' that rewarded cronies and punished enemies at the expense of both the public and rank-and-file police officers, a copy of the suit shows.
Addressing the claims Thursday during the private meeting with the Partnership for New York, Adams initially said he wanted to explain what happened, according to Kathy Wylde, CEO and president of the business group.
'He just explained that he had increasingly observed that Donlon's behavior was off and that he was forgetting things,' Wylde told The News. 'The mayor was advised by a number of people that this problem was going on and so the mayor sat down with him and asked him to see a doctor and get some medical diagnosis and Donlon refused and he had to let him go.'
Scola noted this was the first time Adams has made such a claim. He did not broach any medical issue when he decided to replace Donlon with Tisch.
After Donlon was pushed out in April from the City Hall post where he worked on obtaining grants, Donlon's lawsuit states he was told the position was being eliminated.
'You don't entrust someone with public safety responsibilities in one of the most powerful offices in the country if you genuinely believe they're mentally unfit,' Scola said. 'There is no record of any medical request, no documentation, and no credible basis for these after-the-fact smears—just a transparent attempt to discredit a whistleblower who exposed corruption at the highest levels.'
Adams declined to answer questions about Donlon's mental state after a campaign rally in downtown Manhattan Friday afternoon.
Early Friday, Adams suggested the lawsuit was politically motivated, coming in the midst of a tough general election campaign in which the mayor is facing off against Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party nominee, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
'I see an alignment that the timing of this and the individuals involved, and there was clearly what appears to be a rush in this recent one,' he said.
'If you read the 200 and something pages of a novel, typos, there was blanks. So it seems as though someone was trying to rush to get this out during this period of time, because any lawyer that's worth a dime would not submit something with typos, with blanks, with all of these errors on it.'
Adams also declared, 'If you really want to get an understanding of Tom, interview him for 15 minutes … and then you tell me, what's your impression? What do you observe?'
Pressed on what he meant by this, he said: 'Listen, I don't want to be biased.'