Deal brokered by top NYC real estate official Jesse Hamilton scrutinized by City Council

The general counsel for New York’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services advised against a leasing deal brokered by Jesse Hamilton, a top real estate official in Mayor Adams’ administration whose phone was seized last month as part of a corruption investigation led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
The revelation came at a City Council oversight hearing Tuesday on the agency’s commercial leasing operations as Hamilton, a DCAS deputy commissioner and longtime Adams ally remains under scrutiny as part of the corruption probe, and after POLITICO reported that Hamilton circumvented a formal bidding process to give a multi-million dollar leasing contract to Alex Rovt, a billionaire donor to Adams.
Earlier this year another real estate company had won a formal bid to move the city’s Department for the Aging to a new space, but Hamilton intervened and instead moved the lease to 14 Wall St., a Financial District building owned by Rovt, according to POLITICO.
“My understanding is that the general counsel felt that the optics of going to 14 Wall St. might look troubling,” DCAS Commissioner Louis Molina said at the Council hearing, adding that the agency’s lawyer didn’t find the deal to be illegal.
Molina, who was appointed commissioner in June, said his agency opted to give the Adams donor the deal despite the lawyer’s warning because it saved the city millions of dollars.
Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer questioned DCAS’ decision to relocate the Department for the Aging’s headquarters to 14 Wall St. instead of the office building the agency had previously signed off on, saying it was unclear where the savings Molina referred to were coming from.
“It’s hard to know what’s factual, I’ll put it that way,” Brewer said.
Though he was asked to provide testimony, Hamilton didn’t appear at the Council hearing.
Hamilton had his phone taken by Manhattan DA agents at JFK Airport on Sept. 27 after returning from a trip to Japan that City Hall officials say was a vacation with Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the mayor’s chief adviser, and Diana Boutross, an executive at a real estate firm heavily involved in the city’s commercial leasing. Agents took phones from Lewis-Martin and Boutross at the airport, too.
The DA investigation that prompted the phone seizures is reportedly looking into possible bribery, money laundering and other crimes pertaining to DCAS’ commercial property leasing operation — an area of business Hamilton oversees in his post and which Boutross is extensively involved in as one of the city government’s main commercial property brokers.
No one has been accused of wrongdoing in the probe.
Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler, a Democrat who chairs the Council Government Operations Committee that hosted the hearing, earlier grilled Molina on why Hamilton’s duties haven’t been at all restricted, given the subject matter of the DA investigation.
Molina replied he opted not to do so after his general counsel and human resources team determined Hamilton hadn’t violated any internal DCAS protocols.
“That’s a leap,” Restler shot back, noting the probe is ongoing.
“The fact that we have seen no comprehensive review of Deputy Commissioner Hamilton’s decisions, no guardrails imposed [and] no modified duty is concerning,” Restler said later.
Molina also fielded a number of questions about the Japan trip involving Hamilton.
The commissioner said he didn’t know beforehand that Boutross, whose firm Cushman & Wakefield has extensive business interests before DCAS, was with Hamilton in Japan. He also testified he didn’t find anything inappropriate about the trip since it was a personal vacation and no city funds were spent on it.
Restler protested “it was clearly unseemly and highly inappropriate” for Hamilton to go on the trip with Boutross, given their professional entanglement.
In a previously unknown detail, Molina testified he met with Boutross and Hamilton in his office on Oct. 8 for a meeting about a “possible acquisition” of a logistics center in the Bronx by DCAS — after the phone seizures. Molina said no decisions about that deal have been made.
In his weekly press conference at City Hall later Tuesday, Adams said DCAS under his tenure has saved city taxpayers “millions of dollars.”
“I came into city government where taxpayers’ dollars were being wasted, and I said no to that when I was running and I lived up to that as the mayor,” Adams said.