Outgoing Schools Chancellor David Banks and his decade-plus partner First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright plan to finally tie the knot this weekend, as a federal corruption probe ensnares the Banks family, three sources familiar with their nuptial plans tell the Daily News.
The wedding ceremony between two of Mayor Adams’ top aides, on Martha’s Vineyard, was reportedly first scheduled for August 2023 — but postponed until the most tumultuous week of the Adams administration as the mayor faces federal bribery and foreign campaign donation charges.
Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News
Chancellor David Banks and Sheena Wright plan Martha’s Vineyard wedding amid federal corruption probe: sources
It’s not clear at which venue the wedding was slated to take place or how many people were expected to attend. But the nuptials were believed to be a very small, tight-knit affair, one source said.
“We have been talking about this for a while and now living in Harlem together, and I said it’s time,” Banks said in an interview with New York Magazine in fall 2022, when the pair got engaged.
Their union comes as Banks earlier this month announced his retirement by the end of the year, and Wright is also rumored to be heading out the door. Earlier this week, Adams issued an unusual executive order that eases Wright’s ability to delegate her duties.
Mayor Adams, who on Wednesday at Banks’ retirement press conference in the Bronx referred to the departing schools chancellor as his “brother,” did not plan to attend.
“The mayor’s in town the whole weekend,” Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy said Saturday. Levy declined to say if any taxpayer dollars are being spent on the wedding weekend, but said Wright does not have her own security detail and pays for her own personal travel.
NY Mayor Media Office
Outgoing Schools Chancellor David Banks plants three kisses on his fiancé Sheena Wright at his retirement press conference Wednesday at the Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice. (NY Mayor Media Office)
Banks and Wright had their phones seized and Harlem apartment raided by the FBI on Sept. 4. Sources told The News the feds are looking at David’s younger brother, Terence Banks, a government relations consultant who has clients with business before the Department of Education and also got his devices taken and home searched by the feds earlier this month.
Terence Banks’ clients also have business before agencies under the purview of a third Banks brother, Philip Banks, Adams’ deputy mayor for public safety whose home was raided and devices seized by the feds earlier this month, too.
None of the Banks brothers have been publicly accused of wrongdoing by the feds.
Adams, the only member of the administration criminally charged to date, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Federal Court on Friday to charges that he solicited and accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions from Turkish nationals and government officials in exchange for city government favors.
While there’s no indication Banks and Wright are getting hitched for marital privilege, their union could provide them legal cover if prosecutors try to force husband and wife to testify against each other.
“Folks can write whatever the hell they want to write. But I know … that is my beloved,” Banks said at his retirement press conference at Bronx School for Law, Government and Justice in Concourse Village, where he planted three kisses on Wright. “I know my truth. I know my truth.”
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