Endorsement by Mayor Adams Appears to Lift Sales of Kash Patel’s Book

As mayor of New York City, Eric Adams faces uncertain re-election prospects this year. Should all not go according to plan, he may want to try his hand as a book promoter.

Hours after the federal corruption charges against him were formally dropped this month, the mayor ended a celebratory news conference by plugging a book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy,” by Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I.

Mr. Adams urged all New Yorkers to pick up a copy. And then he repeated that message at least three more times within 24 hours, including on a popular podcast.

Readers appear to have listened.

In the week encompassing Mr. Adams’s brief, pro bono promotional tour, U.S. print sales for “Government Gangsters” skyrocketed nearly 800 percent, from 228 to 2,019, according to Circana BookScan.

More copies of Mr. Patel’s book sold between March 30 and April 5 than during the week of his Senate confirmation hearing in January, when 745 print copies changed hands. It is also the most print copies of the book sold in a week since October 2023, after it was first published.

For the first time since it was published that September, the book appeared this week on Amazon’s “most sold” nonfiction list, debuting at No. 11. The list includes books sold and preordered through Amazon and Audible. The book also made it to No. 14 on The New York Times’s nonfiction best-seller list, its first appearance there.

“When a backlist book sees a sales boost like this after it’s been spotlighted in the media, that’s usually a key factor driving the sales growth,” said Brenna Connor, a director and industry analyst at Circana.

The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Patel’s book purports to tell the truth about the shadowy “deep state,” a cabal of ideologically driven civil servants lurking in the halls of government and visiting injustice on innocents — such as, Mr. Adams implied, himself.

“I’m going to encourage every New Yorker to read it,” he said the day his indictment was dismissed — a move that the federal judge overseeing the case made clear was a procedural necessity and not a reflection on the mayor’s guilt or innocence. “Read it and understand how we can never allow this to happen to another innocent American.”

That same day, his appearance on an episode of “Flagrant” was posted to podcasting platforms and YouTube, where the show has 1.88 million subscribers. There, too, Mr. Adams spread the gospel of Mr. Patel, during a discussion about what he cast as an unduly powerful “permanent government.”

Andrew Schulz, one of the podcast’s hosts, asked Mr. Adams if those who had prosecuted him were part of the deep state, adding that he thought the term was used too much.

“It’s not used too much,” Mr. Adams said. “It’s real, brother!”

As of Friday, the episode had more than 400,000 views.

The day after his appearance, the mayor told Fox 5 New York that he had read several books since the federal government’s investigation into him became public, and that one had stood out: “Kash’s book.” He delivered a similar message later that day at a Police Department news conference.

Kayla Mamelak Altus, Mr. Adams’s press secretary, said his comments reflected the mayor’s belief that it was “important for everyone to step out of their silos and echo chambers and hear different points of view, especially in this day and age.”

Mr. Adams was accused by prosecutors of taking bribes and knowingly soliciting illegal foreign donations that were routed through straw donors. In exchange, they said, he facilitated the opening of a new, high-rise Turkish Consulate, despite a Fire Department assessment that the building was “not safe to occupy.”

Mr. Adams has maintained his innocence and frequently suggested that he was persecuted by the Biden administration for his outspoken criticism of its border policies.

Manhattan prosecutors have rebutted that assertion. After the Trump administration moved to dismiss the mayor’s case in February, they suggested that he had engaged in an illegal quid pro quo: exchanging help with President Trump’s deportation agenda for the dismissal of his charges.

Rebuffing the mayor, Judge Dale E. Ho dismissed the notion that there was any prosecutorial impropriety.

“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” he wrote in his opinion, suggesting instead that it was the arrangement with the Trump administration that “smacks of a bargain.”

But Mr. Adams, who has cozied up to Mr. Trump and others in his orbit, has apparently taken solace in Mr. Patel’s book, which advances the theory that the deep state is a “dangerous threat” to democracy.

In the book, Mr. Patel calls the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia a “hoax” and suggests that the F.B.I. had a role in instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

“What’s most terrifying is that the persecution of the establishment’s political opponents didn’t stop with the protesters who were at the Capitol that fateful day,” he wrote. “Soon, they expanded their reach to target any American who has ever dared to wear a MAGA cap.”

Susan C. Beachycontributed research.