Frank Carone, who served as chief-of-staff to former Mayor Eric Adams and now faces federal corruption charges, has beefed up his roster of high-powered defense attorneys.
Court records show that Carone has hired Marc Agnifilo, Karen Friedman Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan, the team of attorneys representing Luigi Mangione in his upcoming murder trial. He also hired Zach Intrater, a partner at their law firm. The four join a slew of other defense lawyers representing the former mayoral adviser and his co-defendants against charges of bribery, money laundering and other federal crimes.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York has accused Carone of helping a Long Island City hotel owner and his business partner to get a multimillion-dollar emergency contract for a migrant shelter, in exchange for about $120,000 in bribes.
Prosecutors said the pair funneled the money through his brother Anthony Carone. The defendants have all pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
Carone is a born and bred Brooklynite and long-time friend of Adams. He’s also a lawyer, himself, and has worked at the politically connected white shoe law firm Abrams Fensterman.
In 2023, he founded Oaktree Solutions, which he describes on his website as a “public affairs and venture consulting firm” that provides a wide range of services for its clients, including crisis management and government relations strategy.
“Frank Carone has assembled a formidable legal team, and that is because all of us believe in his innocence,” defense attorney Andrew Goldstein said after a scheduling conference in Brooklyn federal court Monday morning.
Goldstein said his client “acted with integrity while in office and followed the law.” He said the defense team also plans to file motions to “expose the holes” in the prosecution’s case.
Another prominent member of Carone’s defense team is Arthur Aidala, who is also representing former Adams aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin in a separate corruption case in Manhattan state court. Federal prosecutors have criticized Aidala for making statements after Carone’s first court appearance that they said appeared to be politically motivated.
In court on Monday, District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto announced that Carone’s trial would not go forward as initially planned in late August — a date she said was always unlikely given the large amount of discovery in the case. Prosecutors said they still have to turn over information recovered from electronic devices that investigators seized more recently.
It took several minutes for the judge, the prosecutors and the various attorneys representing the defendants to agree on a new trial date when no one had a conflict. Matsumoto set a new date of May 3, 2027. The trial is expected to last about a month.
