About a year ago, not long after Eric Adams was sworn in as the mayor of New York, an old friend and church leader named Lamor Whitehead went to an auto shop in the Bronx, to drop off a Mercedes-Benz G-Class S.U.V. that had been in a crash. Whitehead led a small church in Brooklyn called Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministries. People called him Bishop. The shop he visited, No Limit Auto Body, was operated by a man named Brandon Belmonte, who was involved in real estate. Federal prosecutors would later refer to Belmonte as “a businessman.”
The Mercedes was a twenty-five-thousand-dollar job. Belmonte paid the thirteen-thousand-dollar bill for a rental replacement while the work was getting done. Whitehead wanted more. “He basically says, ‘You got to give me another five grand,’” Belmonte recalled. “I said, ‘Bro, the job was only twenty-five thousand. Thirteen and five is eighteen. The parts were seven grand. I’m gonna make zero.’ ” It occurred to Belmonte that Whitehead wasn’t trying to negotiate— he was asking for a kickback. He promised to make it worth Belmonte’s while. “I got City Hall in my back pocket,” Whitehead said, according to Belmonte.
Denne historien er fra January 30, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra January 30, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.