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NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York City official was charged Tuesday with witness tampering and destroying evidence in a federal investigation that led to Mayor Eric Adams’ bribery indictment. The arrest came amid yet more high-profile departures from Adams’ administration.

Federal prosecutors allege that Mohamed Bahi, who resigned Monday as a community affairs liaison, told a businessman and campaign donors to lie to the FBI in June, and deleted the encrypted messaging app Signal from his cell phone as FBI agents arrived to search his home in July. Bahi had used the app to communicate with Adams, prosecutors said.

Bahi, 40, of Staten Island, was arrested Tuesday and is expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan. Information on a lawyer who could speak on his behalf was not listed in an online court docket.

Bahi is the first person other than Adams to be charged in the investigation.

In recent weeks, more than half-dozen of the mayor’s top aides have departed amid a rash of searches and subpoenas, as Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to pressure Adams to shake up his administration and bring stability to city government.

In the latest high-level departure, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright submitted her resignation Monday, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel changes.

That exit came one day after Adams confirmed the resignation of Philip Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety, and Winnie Greco, his director of Asian affairs whose own fundraiser efforts for the mayor have come under scrutiny. Last week, he announced the school’s chancellor David Banks – Wright’s husband, Philip Banks’ brother – would step down later this month.

The city’s police commissioner, Edward Caban, and a senior mayoral advisor, Timothy Pearson, have also resigned. All of the officials have had their devices seized by federal investigators. Each has denied wrongdoing.

A voicemail left with a representative for Wright was not immediately returned.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Bahi’s charges “should leave no doubt about the seriousness of any effort to interfere with a federal investigation, particularly when undertaken by a government employee.”

“Our commitment to uncovering the truth and following the facts wherever they may lead is unwavering,” Williams said.

Adams, a Democrat, has vowed to stay in office after pleading not guilty Sept. 27 to charges that he accepted about $100,000 worth of free or deeply discounted international flights, hotel stays, meals and entertainment, and sought illegal campaign contributions from foreign interests.

Hochul, a Democrat who has the power to remove Adams from office, said last week that she was working with the mayor to make sure key positions “are filled with people who are going to be responsible.”

“We expect changes, that’s not a secret, and changes are beginning,” Hochul said.

Bahi’s criminal complaint alleges that he organized a fundraiser at the Brooklyn headquarters of a construction company in December 2020, where Bahi suggested that the company’s owner have his employees make donations to Adams’ campaign and then refund the workers for the $2,000 payments – a little under the maximum allowed by any individual donor in the city.

Four employees and the owner made donations to the campaign, with the workers’ payments reimbursed by the company, according to the complaint. All have subsequently spoken to law enforcement, and the owner admitted his involvement in the illegal straw donations, according to prosecutors.

In his own indictment, Adams is also accused of knowingly accepting illegal donations from straw donors – in his case, conspiring to take campaign contributions from Turkish nationals and disguising the payments by routing them through U.S. citizens. That enabled Adams to unlock public funds that provide an eight-to-one match for small-dollar donations, prosecutors said.

At a hearing last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten said prosecutors are pursuing “several related investigations” and that it is “likely” additional defendants will be charged and “possible” that more charges will be brought against Adams.

Bahi’s criminal complaint states that federal and city authorities began investigating straw donations to the Adams campaign in 2021, when he was running for mayor while holding a different elected office, Brooklyn borough president. Adams was sworn in as mayor in 2022.

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Associated Press journalist Ruth Brown contributed to this report.

The last time the eye of a major storm like Hurricane Milton struck Tampa Bay, in 1921, the city was a sleepy backwater of a few hundred thousand people. A century later, it’s among the fastest-growing metropolises in the United States, with more than 3 million people, and highly vulnerable to flooding due to climate change. As Milton barrels toward the Gulf Coast of Florida, strengthening Monday into a Category 5 storm, experts are worried that a century of luck could come to a sudden end.

Here’s what to know:

Why is Tampa so vulnerable?

The National Hurricane Center is predicting storm surge in Tampa Bay and surrounding waters of between 8 and 12 feet (2.5 to 3 meters) above normal tide conditions, and rainfall of between 4 and 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) because of Hurricane Milton.

The entire Gulf Coast of Florida is especially vulnerable to storm surge. Last week, Hurricane Helene, which came ashore some 150 miles (240 kilometers) away from Tampa in the Florida Panhandle, still managed to cause drowning deaths in the Tampa area due to surges of around 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.5 meters) above normal tide levels.

“Had it made landfall just little farther to the south and east, it could have been a lot, lot worse,” said Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University.

The heightened risk is partially a result of topography. The Gulf of Mexico coastline of Florida is shallow with a gentle, sloping shelf. The higher ocean floor acts as a barrier that retains the storm’s outflow of water, forcing the ocean to surge onto shore. That’s the opposite of Florida’s east coast, where the ocean floor drops suddenly a few miles from the coast.

“You can have the same storm, the same intensity, the same everything, but very different surges,” said Klotzbach.

A 2015 report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding from a hurricane and stands to lose $175 billion in damage.

Are residents ready?

While Floridians are no strangers to storms, Tampa hasn’t been in the direct path of a major hurricane in over a century.

In that lapse, the area has exploded in growth. Tens of thousands of Americans moved to the area during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many choosing to settle along barrier islands near Clearwater and St. Petersburg overlooking the normally placid, emerald Gulf waters. More than 51,000 people moved to the area between 2022 and 2023, making it the fifth-largest-growing U.S. metropolitan area, according to U.S. Census data.

Longer term residents, after having experienced numerous false alarms and near misses like Irma in 2017, may be similarly unprepared for a direct hit. A local legend has it that blessings from Native Americans who once called the region home and used to build mounds to keep out invaders have largely protected the area from major storms for centuries.

MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel said a hurricane in Tampa is the “black swan” worst-case scenario that experts have worried about for years.

“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. “I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”

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This item has been updated to remove erroneous information about barrier island.

What about climate change?

Also lurking in the waves and wind are the effects of climate change. Rising temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the oceans, led to sea level rise and added moisture to the air — all key factors determining a hurricane’s strength and the potential flooding it can cause.

“Due to global warming, global climate models predict hurricanes will likely cause more intense rainfall and have an increased coastal flood risk due to higher storm surge caused by rising seas,” Angela Colbert, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a 2022 report.

On Monday, the National Hurricane Center upgraded Milton to a Category 5 storm after it gained 75 mph (120 kph) of intensity in the last 24 hours. One reason may be especially high water temperatures, which act like fuel for the storm.

“Milton’s rapid intensification is incredible,” University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said in an email. “I’ve been pointing out for months, the Gulf has been and is record or near-record warm.”

The researcher noted that, due to rising sea levels brought on by climate change, Hurricane Andrew’s storm surge today would be 7 inches (17 centimeters) higher than it was when that storm pounded South Florida 30 years ago.

Are people being evacuated?

Officials in the area began issuing evacuation orders Monday for residents in six counties surrounding Tampa Bay that are home to almost 4 million people. Residents of mobile homes, RVs and manufactured homes not capable of withstanding winds of up to 110 mph (177 kph) are especially at risk.

Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie strongly urged people to leave coastal areas, noting people who died on barrier islands during Hurricane Ian in 2022 would still be alive if they just crossed the bridge to the mainland and found shelter.

“Please, if you’re in the Tampa Bay area, you need to evacuate. If they have called an evacuation order, I beg you, I implore you to evacuate. Drowning deaths due to storm surge are 100% preventable if you leave,” Guthrie said.

When was the last storm to hit Tampa?

Almost inexplicably, storms seem to bypass Tampa, with most Gulf disturbances passing well north of the city. The last time the Tampa area was hit by the eye of a major hurricane was Oct. 25, 1921. The hurricane had no official name but is known locally as the Tarpon Springs storm, for the seaside town where it came ashore.

The storm surge from that hurricane, estimated at Category 3 with winds of up to 129 mph (207 kph) was pegged at 11 feet (3.3 meters). At least eight people died, and damage was estimated at $5 million at the time.

Now, the tourist-friendly area known for its sandy white beaches has grown by leaps and bound, with an economy estimated to be worth nearly $200 billion. Hurricane Milton threatens to wash away all of that development.

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AP Writers Joshua Goodman in Miami and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — When Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with podcaster Alex Cooper, the conversation didn’t start by parsing policy positions. The goal, Cooper told the Democratic nominee, was “to get to know you as a person.”

And that was just fine with Harris, who said she was on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast because “one of the best ways to communicate with people is to be real.”

Long past the midway point of her unexpected presidential campaign and with voting already underway, Harris is still introducing herself to Americans who will determine this year’s presidential election.

On Tuesday, her media blitz is taking her to studios across Manhattan as the Democratic nominee tries to reach as many people as possible in the shortest period of time. It’s a sharp shift after largely avoiding interviews since replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, and it’s an acknowledgment that she needs to do more to defeat Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Harris began the day with the women of ABC’s “The View,” and was later to speak with longtime radio host Howard Stern and tape a show with late-night comedian Stephen Colbert. The trio of appearances came after Harris granted interviews to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” which aired Monday night, and Cooper’s podcast, which was released Sunday.

“Call Her Daddy” is often raunchy, with frank talk about sex, but Harris and Cooper began by talking about their mothers.

Harris said her mother’s first instinct was never to comfort her eldest daughter when she ran into problems. Instead, she asked, “What did you do?”

Although that might sound cold, the vice president said, “she was actually teaching me, think about where you had agency in that moment, and think about what you had the choice to do or not do. Don’t let things just happen to you.”

It’s interactions like those that Harris’ team is prioritizing for the vice president in the final four weeks before Election Day. She has yet to give an interview to a newspaper or magazine, but her staff is pondering additional podcasts where they believe Harris can reach voters who aren’t following traditional news sources.

Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said Harris has to energize people who have tuned out politics because they believe “all the politicians are the same, they all say the same thing, they don’t know anything about my life, I can’t relate to them at all.”

“They want to like and trust you,” she said.

On The View, Harris was pressed on how she’d govern distinctly from Biden, even as she said she couldn’t name a single decision from the past four years she would have made differently.

“We’re also different people and I will bring those sensibilities to how I lead,” she said.

Jennifer Harris, the former White House senior director of international economics, said Harris has a steeper hill to climb because of the way she became the Democratic nominee.

“We did not have a good long primary to meet Kamala Harris in the way most voters are accustomed to,” she said. Harris has to find a way to demonstrate the instincts and principles that ”will be guiding any number of hundreds of specific policy questions that will come up in the course of the presidency.”

While Harris has unveiled some policy proposals during her two and half months at the top of the ticket — and she was using her Tuesday appearance on “The View” to discuss new plans to lower costs for those caring for children and elderly parents, her campaign said — she’s given prime billing to speeches about her “economic philosophy,” like one she delivered in Pittsburgh two weeks ago.

There, Harris pushed back against Trump’s claims that she’s advancing “communist” ideas. She embraced capitalism and positioned herself as a pragmatist who “would take good ideas from wherever they come.”

“As president, I will be grounded in my fundamental values of fairness, dignity and opportunity,” Harris said. “And I promise you, I will be pragmatic in my approach.”

Senior campaign officials have largely blocked out criticism from some corners that Harris hasn’t articulated more policy positions. Instead, they say that small yet pivotal numbers of still-undecided voters say they want to know more about Harris before making up their minds, and that the more those voters see Harris, the more they like her.

If policy papers alone won elections, Harris allies say, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be wrapping up her second term or Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be in the throes of a reelection fight.

Even Trump this time around has articulated a deeper policy vision than either of his two prior campaigns, though he has worked to disavow association with the conservative “Project 2025” vision for the next Republican president produced by former aides and advisers.

Republican communications strategist Kevin Madden said defining Harris in voters’ eyes is the central challenge of the campaign.

“This race is actually pretty simple in the sense that the next few weeks are about who’s going to fill in the blanks on who Harris is,” he said.

Being a vice president confers a certain amount of basic name recognition. In October 2019, while Harris was one of many candidates in the Democratic presidential primary, AP-NORC polling found that about 3 in 10 Americans didn’t know enough about her to have an opinion. That share dropped to around 1 in 10 Americans by early 2021, when she and Biden took office, where it stayed until earlier this summer.

Now, nearly all Americans know enough to have at least a surface opinion — whether positive or negative — of Harris.

But that doesn’t mean perspectives on Harris are settled, or that Americans know as much as they would like about her. Harris’ favorability numbers shifted slightly over the course of the summer, suggesting that opinion of her may still be somewhat malleable.

Other polls indicate that while some voters are still looking for more information about Harris, views of Trump appear to be more settled. One-quarter of likely voters said they still feel like they need to learn more about Harris, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after her debate against Trump, while about three-quarters say they pretty much already know what they need to know about her.

Trump, on the hand, was more of a known quantity. One in 10 likely voters said they feel like they need to learn more about Trump, while roughly 9 in 10 said they pretty much already know what they need to know.

Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, also is spending more time doing interviews to help people get to know him better rather than going deep on policy. In an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Monday night, Walz talked about the “surreal” experience of being on the ticket, his background as a high school teacher and football coach, and even how he lists Harris in his phone contacts — as the “dry cleaner.”

On “Call Her Daddy,” Cooper told Harris that people are “frustrated and just exhausted with politics in general.”

“Why should we trust you?” she asked.

Harris answered by saying “you can look at my career to know what I care about.”

She continued: “I care about making sure that people are entitled to and receive the freedoms that they are due. I care about lifting people up and making sure that you are protected from harm.”

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Megerian reported from Washington. AP writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.