Federal Prosecutors Subpoenaed Records Related To Former Nyc Council Speaker Corey Johnson And His Top Aide

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors sent a grand jury subpoena to the New York City Council last summer seeking records associated with former Council Speaker Corey Johnson — a request the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office then quickly rescinded, according to two people with knowledge of the interaction.

In a separate grand jury subpoena also sent to the Council, the U.S. attorney’s office sought records related to Johnson’s longtime Council aide and business partner, Jason Goldman, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive legal matter.

The subpoena related to Goldman, who served as Johnson’s chief of staff, requested records about training that Council employees receive regarding post-employment restrictions on activities like lobbying, the people told POLITICO. The materials would have instructed staffers what types of work with the Council would be off limits upon leaving the body.

The Council fulfilled the request for records related to Goldman later in 2025, the people said. It is unclear why prosecutors pulled back the subpoena relating to Johnson or what type of records it sought. But one of the two people who spoke with POLITICO said the subpoena appeared to have been sent by mistake and was not meant for the Council. There was no indication provided to the Council that either former city official was a target of an investigation.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined comment. Johnson and Goldman did not respond to questions about the subpoenas.

The withdrawal of the Johnson request perplexed a former federal prosecutor who worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District. He said he had never before heard of a subpoena being pulled back after its issuance.

“It is rare for a grand jury subpoena to be withdrawn unless its issuance was in error,” said the former prosecutor, who was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. “There are all sorts of accommodations that are typical, such as accepting a subset of materials or a representation that there are no responsive documents, but withdrawal is not among those.”

Johnson served as speaker of the City Council from 2018 through the end of 2021. Following an unsuccessful 2021 bid for city comptroller, he became a lobbyist with clients that include real estate projects, a casino developer, DoorDash and the Brooklyn Nets, according to the most recent public records.

After a career in lobbying, Goldman served as Johnson’s chief of staff, wrangling legislators and pushing Johnson’s major priorities, from 2018 until 2021. After also briefly working for Johnson’s successor, former Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, Goldman went back into the lobbying and government relations business where he continues to work closely with Johnson. Public lobbying data show the two have numerous clients in common.

The subpoenas were delivered to the office of former Speaker Adams, which fulfilled the request related to Goldman. The former speaker declined to comment. Her successor, current Speaker Julie Menin, also declined to comment.

The Goldman subpoena sought records related to training on what sort of lobbying work former Council members and employees can engage in after they leave city government.

Under city law, Council members like Johnson are barred from lobbying members and staff of the legislative chamber for two years after they leave office. Former Council aides like Goldman are only barred for a year from lobbying Council members and staff. The laws are designed to prevent revolving door situations in which former city officials can monetize their government connections immediately upon entering the private sector.

Johnson launched his government relations firm, CoJo Strategies, shortly after leaving the Council in late 2021 and started lobbying other branches of local government besides the Council, city records show. Goldman launched his own lobbying firm, JMG Strategies, around the same time and picked up several clients that Johnson also represented simultaneously, according to state and city records.

The subpoenas to the Council for Johnson and Goldman records came at a particularly hectic time for the Southern District.

In early 2025, the office was thrown into chaos after top Department of Justice officials pressured the Southern District to drop a public corruption case against former Mayor Eric Adams.

The directive kicked off a wave of resignations in New York City and Washington that included Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, and five attorneys in the DOJ’s public integrity unit in Washington.

In addition to quashing the Eric Adams case, Trump-appointed Department of Justice officials ordered the Southern District to cease “further targeting” of his administration, a directive that led to concerns at the time about what would happen to several other public corruption investigations the office had been pursuing.

Johnson and Goldman have a connection to a current case being prosecuted by the Southern District, though there is no indication last summer’s subpoenas were related to that probe. 

Last month, the Southern District indicted Geno Roefaro, a Florida businessman and former Johnson and Goldman lobbying client, on charges alleging he bribed former NYPD Chief Kevin Taylor in hopes of landing a city government contract related to security in public schools. Taylor pleaded not guilty last month, while Roefaro has yet to enter a plea, according to court records.

Roefaro started seeking the contract for his company, SaferWatch, in the summer of 2022 and, in hopes of closing the deal, allegedly plied Taylor with tens of thousands of dollars worth of bribes between August 2023 and January 2024, according to the indictment.

Johnson was registered to lobby Adams administration officials on behalf of Roefaro’s company between July 2022 and September 2024, according to city records. Goldman was registered to lobby both Adams administration officials and City Council members during the same period, though city records show he only started pushing SaferWatch to Council members in 2023, when his one-year prohibition was up. 

Johnson and Goldman did not respond to questions from POLITICO about whether investigators have contacted them regarding Roefaro.

In seeking a city contract, Roefaro also paid for lobbying assistance from Terence Banks, the younger brother of David and Philip Banks, two top officials in the Adams administration. All three Banks brothers’ homes were raided by the FBI in 2024 in connection with a Southern District corruption investigation, though none of them have been accused of wrongdoing.

The Southern District has had a complicated relationship with recent cases touching New York government.

During Adams’ tenure, the U.S. attorney’s office appeared to be casting a wide net in search of graft. The feds confiscated phones and searched homes of various top Adams aides and businesses related to his campaign, hollowing out the one-term executive’s inner circle before pursuing the mayor himself.

Adams’ 2024 bribery indictment, however, was ultimately dismissed at the behest of the Department of Justice under circumstances so unusual a federal judge raised questions about there being a quid pro quo between the former mayor and the Trump administration — allegations Adams denied.

Since the resulting resignations, the Southern District has pursued several lower profile public corruption cases.

The Department of Justice is also looking into Adams’ former chief of staff, Frank Carone, as previously reported by POLITICO and other outlets. After news of that investigation broke in January, Carone said in a statement he has done nothing wrong and is accustomed to facing “baseless accusations” because of his Italian-American heritage and “full Brooklyn accent.”

Johnson and Goldman have connections to Carone, though there’s no indication the summer subpoenas were related to the former chief of staff or the Department of Justice’s probe into him. That case is being pursued by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

In tandem with working on lobbying efforts with Johnson, Goldman served as a “senior strategic adviser” at Carone’s consulting firm, Oaktree Solutions, which Carone launched after resigning from City Hall in late 2022. Goldman’s name was removed from Oaktree’s website after the Carone investigation landed in the headlines in late January.