Mayor Mamdani's administration reconsidering funding legal defense for ex-Adams aide Tim Pearson

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on Jan 9, 2026

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NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration is revisiting a decision by his predecessor to let ex-City Hall adviser Tim Pearson get taxpayer-funded legal representation against four lawsuits accusing him of sexual harassment and professional retaliation.

As reported by the Daily News earlier this week, Pearson, who served as a top public safety adviser to ex-Mayor Eric Adams, has racked up a legal tab that exceeds $622,000 between the four cases.

Under a controversial arrangement greenlit by Adams’ administration, city taxpayers are picking up that tab, even though Pearson’s attorneys are private, not from the Law Department.

Asked Friday whether the legal tab revelations will prompt his administration to rescind Pearson’s arrangement, Mamdani said, “As soon as we read that report, we started to look into it.”

Mamdani, who took office last week, didn’t lay out a timeline for how soon his team will come to a decision. “When we have anything additional to share, we will do so,” he said.

Pearson’s attorneys didn’t return a request for comment Friday afternoon.

The four lawsuits, brought by former and current NYPD employees, accuse Pearson of sexually harassing one of the plaintiffs and then retaliating against her and the other three when they spoke out, including by demoting them.

Pearson, an ex-NYPD inspector and longtime friend to Adams, who empowered him to exercise significant influence over the city’s law enforcement apparatus, has denied wrongdoing.

Also while in city government, Pearson was sued for allegedly assaulting a migrant shelter security guard — a case that concluded with a $350,000 taxpayer-funded settlement — and got raided by federal authorities investigating him and other top Adams aides over corruption allegations.

Adams, who was himself indicted in 2024 on corruption charges that were later quashed by President Trump’s Department of Justice, consistently defended Pearson in public, saying he was entitled to a presumption of innocence. Pearson, who hasn’t been criminally charged with any wrongdoing, resigned from his City Hall post in September 2024 after the feds raided him.

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