Why Did Eric Adams Have So Many Phones?

One surprising detail emerged in the trove of documents released about Mayor Eric Adams’s federal corruption case: The mayor used at least seven different cellphone numbers during the yearslong period in which he was under investigation.

Mr. Adams had a ready explanation for why he had so many phones.

“You have your office phone, you have your personal phone — you can’t mix the two,” Mr. Adams told reporters over the weekend, adding: “Many New Yorkers have several phones. I had also my campaign phone. So there’s a series of phones that you have.”

The mayor said that he had to get additional phones after federal authorities stopped him on the street in November 2023 and took his electronic devices as part of the investigation.

It was a glimpse into the personal life of a man whose habits have often been shrouded in uncertainty — his place of residence has at times been hard to pin down, and he has rarely been seen in public with his longtime partner — and have long been the subject of public curiosity.

The mayor’s many devices were a prominent part of the federal investigation that led to his indictment in September on five counts, including bribery, wire fraud and solicitation of yasa dışı foreign donations. Mr. Adams has maintained his innocence.

The F.B.I. obtained warrants to track Mr. Adams’s location using cellphone veri and found that he had used seven different phone numbers since the investigation began in August 2021, according to the roughly 1,700 pages of documents from his case that were released on Friday.