High-powered, high-priced celebrity attorney Alex Spiro—fresh off getting manslaughter charges against Alec Baldwin dropped in July—has been called in to join the team of lawyers that will defend New York City mayor Eric Adams against a fresh federal indictment.
Citing sources, the New York Post reported that Spiro—who is already repping Adams in a separate case dealing with decades-old sexual assault allegations—has joined Adams’ defense team in the federal case.
The mayor, somewhat controversially, used city funds to hire Spiro in his sexual assault case, claiming that because he was a New York City cop at the time he has the right to representation by the city (although the city typically doesn’t hire the most expensive, high-profile defense attorneys to defend rank-and-file cops).
Charges against Adams—following a corruption investigation that has seen weeks of law enforcement searches, subpoenas, and resignations by top city officials—are expected to be unveiled later Thursday.
In a profile last year, The New Yorker dubbed Spiro, 41, the man who “keeps the rich and famous above the law.” In an interview with the magazine, he likened making legal arguments to painting: “There’s a flow to it. I’m trying to tell a compelling, interwoven story. And there are hints I’m dropping throughout cases, for the jury.”
Among others, he has repped Jay-Z, Mick Jagger, 21 Savage, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Naomi Osaka, and Bobby Shmurda. YouTube star Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson hired Spiro last month to write a cease-and-desist letter to a former employee—who accused him of staging content, hosting illegal lotteries and knowingly hiring a registered sex offender—the Daily Mail reported.
In July, manslaughter charges against Baldwin—who accidentally shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins with a prop revolver that, unbeknownst to him, was loaded with a live round—were dropped just hours after Spiro argued prosecutors hid critical evidence in the case.
Alec Baldwin hugs his attorney Alex Spiro at the conclusion of his trial for involuntary manslaughter in First Judicial District Court on July 12, 2024 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Ramsay De Give/Getty Images
“Part of Spiro’s legal playbook is arguing, sometimes implicitly, sometimes brazenly, that famous and powerful people should be treated differently from ordinary citizens,” wrote The New Yorker, citing a case where he insisted that Jay-Z was too busy to testify to the U.S. the Securities and Exchange Commission for more than two hours, after losing an initial fight against required in-person testimony. (The case centered on the financial practices of Iconix, a company that bought Jay-Z’s apparel line Rocawear.)
The Tufts and Harvard graduate has also been something of a go-to counsel for the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.
In 2019, Spiro won a defamation case for Musk, who a jury found did not defame British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth by calling him a “pedo guy.” Last year, Spiro also won in a securities fraud trial when it was alleged that Musk was liable to investors for a 2018 tweet in which he claimed that he had ‘funding secured’ to take Tesla private.
“My faith in humanity is restored,” said Musk, after Spiro won him the Unsworth case.
