For the New York mayor, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

What exactly is happening to Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City?

There have been countless resignations from his office, including the police chief, the schools chancellor and Adams’s chief legal adviser. There are so many five Federal investigations into his administration and campaign. On Wednesday, it was announced that Adams had been charged with corruption as part of an investigation – he is the first mayor in modern New York City history to be charged with a crime while in office. And on Thursday morning, federal agents raided the mayor’s mansion to seize more of his electronic devices.

The charges are reportedly part of an FBI investigation into whether Adams’ campaign colluded with the Turkish government and various Turkish groups to illegally funnel foreign money into his campaign, but that won’t be clear until the indictment is made public.

The mayor has so far defiantly maintained his innocence. On Wednesday evening, he released a (possibly pre-recorded) video statement declaring that any charges that are brought “will be completely false and based on lies.”

In other words, it’s not clear what exactly is burning – or how much is burning – but the smoke is so big it could fill Madison Square Garden.

Adams is still running for re-election in the Democratic primary next June. But anything can change at any time. And it’s worth noting that he is the most unpopular New York mayor in the history of Quinnipiac University polls, which go back to the 1990s. Although mayors are usually easily re-elected, Adams already has at least four Democratic challengers. Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who resigned three years ago amid a sexual harassment scandal, is even considering a political comeback at Adams’ expense. And high-ranking Democrats, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are already calling on him to resign.

But even if his administration weren’t under FBI scrutiny, Adams would have problems. After all, he’s the mayor known for making a lot of confusing statements, holding up strange objects at press conferences, and pushing through unpopular budget cuts while behaving oddly. Unlike his immediate predecessors, he lacks a standout political accomplishment that could buoy him.

How did it come to this? How did Adams, who won the 2021 mayoral election and briefly appeared to be the new face of the Democratic Party – a former police captain and son of the black working class who called himself the “Biden of Brooklyn” – become the subject of so many federal investigations that could make him the first one-term New York mayor since the early 1990s?

First, let’s break down what happens with these probes.

More will soon be announced about the federal investigation into Turkey. Last year, agents seized electronic devices belonging to Adams and searched the homes of Adams’ top campaign fundraiser Brianna Suggs and Rana Abbasova, the director of protocol for the mayor’s office of international affairs, in connection with the case. Suggs is expected to be named in the indictment; Abbasova is reportedly cooperating with federal authorities.

Separately, investigators in the Southern District of New York are reportedly trying to determine whether James Caban, the twin brother of former police commissioner Edward Caban, exploited his family ties by acting as a consultant to nightclubs that had complaints against them and sought the police’s assistance. This particular investigation already forced the resignation of Edward Caban, who otherwise denies any wrongdoing. His tenure was the shortest of any NYPD police commissioner in the past 30 years.

The FBI raids also targeted three brothers, two of whom are influential officials in the Adams administration: Schools Chancellor David Banks, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks and Terence Banks, who formerly worked for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and now runs the consulting firm Pearl Alliance. The raids also focused on Sheena Wright, a close Adams ally and first deputy mayor who lives with David Banks, and Tim Pearson, a scandal-scarred senior adviser to Adams. Recent reports indicate that this investigation is focused on the awarding of city contracts.

Adams appointed Pearson, a former New York Police Department inspector, to run a new agency that oversees hundreds of contracts with migrants and security firms. Federal investigators are investigating Saferwatch, a client of Terrence Banks. Saferwatch wanted to sell “panic button” apps for the city’s public schools to be used in emergencies such as fires and school shootings. They put pressure on Terence’s brothers, David and Philip.

Meanwhile, the Eastern District of New York is investigating Adams’ travels to – and his ties to – China. In February, agents raided the offices of a Queens mall where Adams’ 2021 campaign was based, as well as several homes owned by Winnie Greco, a longtime Adams fundraiser and director of Asian affairs at City Hall.

Finally the news of a fifth The investigation was terminated on September 19, when investigators served subpoenas on the monsignor of a Brooklyn church for possible dealings with Adams’ former chief of staff, an influential lawyer and adviser named Frank Carone. The scope and nature of that investigation are not yet clear, but it is separate from the other federal proceedings.

What means all What does that add up to? Well, right now it’s safe to say that no modern New York mayor has been investigated as many times. And none has ever been charged. Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, also faced corruption investigations, but they were fewer in number and never resulted in charges. De Blasio was easily re-elected in 2017.

Adams will not go that route. So far, two Democratic state senators, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, have launched 2025 campaigns. Brad Lander, the current city treasurer, is also running. He is both popular with the progressive left and a hot candidate to unseat Adams. Scott Stringer, Lander’s predecessor, is launching another run for mayor after his 2021 campaign imploded following allegations of sexual harassment that he has vigorously denied. The aforementioned Cuomo is in the spotlight and could be a serious candidate if he pulls the trigger. More challengers could still emerge.

Adams is not dead yet. But one problem he has is that New York uses ranked-choice voting in its primaries. Voters can rate up to five candidates at the ballot box, and Adams barely survived in 2021. He was well ahead in the first round, but almost lost when the votes for second, third, fourth and fifth places were counted. Ranked-choice voting rewards candidates who are not polarizing and may Form coalitions. Adams will find this difficult.

In 2021, voters worried about rising crime chose the former police captain in a field of flawed Democratic candidates that included Andrew Yang, the prominent former presidential candidate who was initially considered the frontrunner until various slips and stumbles sent him plummeting in the polls. Adams came under scrutiny—it turned out he owned an apartment in New Jersey and may have lived there during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president—but this came late in the race, after Yang faced many setbacks, Stringer struggled through his scandal, and other candidates failed to consolidate votes.

In the end, Adams won a narrow victory.

New York has had Republican mayors before, but the city’s Democratic leanings make a Republican victory unlikely unless another billionaire like Michael Bloomberg enters the race and spends much more than the competition. The last mayor to lose re-election, David Dinkins, was defeated in a general election by Rudy Giuliani, but that was in 1993, when the city had many more conservative white ethnic voters. Adams, the city’s second black mayor, has tried to soften the challenges by invoking the Dinkins legacy — the Reverend Al Sharpton has also warned against running against Adams on that basis — but so far neither candidate is concerned about the optics of running against a black mayor.

They believe Adams is too vulnerable. If he stays in the race and runs in the primary next year, 2025 will have clear echoes of 1977. Back then, beleaguered incumbent Abe Beame was fighting through the city’s financial crisis and trying to secure a second term. He was deeply unpopular and Democrats like Ed Koch, the eventual winner, pounced on him. The runner-up was future New York governor Mario Cuomo. Beame had no real chance. And now Mario’s son Andrew could enter a mayoral race. New York, at least, is never boring.