(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Democrat New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the New York Times went to war against each other after the latter claimed that the former lied about carrying an old photo of his friend and fallen NYPD police officer and friend in his wallet for decades.
It all began on Thursday when the Times published an article, in which the author wrote that a portrait of Officer Robert Venable that Adams says he has long carried with him isn’t legit — and is instead just a printed-out Google image that was made to look old, the New York Post reported.
After the article was published, the mayor’s office went on the defensive immediately by accusing the Times of waging a “false attack” against Adams. As their defense, Adams’s team lined up several members of the slain officer’s family to publicly rebuke the claims.
“It is disgusting that The New York Times has chosen to have Robert Venable’s friends and family relive the tragic murder of a loved one for nothing more than feeding its obsession with dissecting every single moment of Mayor Adams’s life as the paper continues its unsuccessful campaign to paint the mayor as a liar,” his spokesman, Fabien Levy, said.
The Times pointed out that staffers inside the mayor’s office were pressured into manipulating the photo of Venable in January 2022 — just days after Adams first publicly revealed he carried the tiny photo.
The employees found an image of the fallen police officer on Google, printed it off in black and white and then splashed coffee on it to make it look old, the newspaper’s source said.
As expected, Adams’ office denied the allegation and insisted that the outlet initially contacted him on Wednesday making claims that the mayor and the slain officer were never actually friends.
“While yesterday’s initial inquiry mentioned a photo, the crux of this request and all initial questions in writing focused on the Times’ claim that there was no real relationship between the two former officers,” a statement from the mayor’s office said.
A spokesperson for the Times defended its reporting in a statement by saying that Adams’s office didn’t deny “the story’s main point.”
“[The] photo he showed to reporters and claimed to have carried for decades was made by aides, who took steps to age its appearance.”
