Nine months before his term expired, Mayor Eric Adams granted Jordan McGraw — the son of TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw — unusual access to trail members of the NYPD: on-duty, up-close, cameras rolling.
The plan, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday and sources familiar with it, was for Jordan McGraw to develop and market a multi-episode series called “Behind the Badge.”
At the time, the deal was controversial. It was made in Adams’ official capacity as mayor and over the objections of his police commissioner Jessica Tisch, according to two administration officials with knowledge of the project.
“Everyone was wildly concerned,” one of the officials said, describing the prospect of exposing sensitive, behind-the-scenes police operations.
The same sources said Mayor Adams was intent on cutting the deal with McGraw, and cutting the NYPD out of that decision. They said by the time his term was up, Adams had apparently lost control over the previously undisclosed NYPD production being managed out of City Hall, even as his reelection campaign paid a firm linked to McGraw $500,000 for campaign consulting, according to Adams’ campaign finance filings and his former campaign manager.
On Wednesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s City Law Department filed suit against Jordan McGraw and his production company, alleging portions of “Behind the Badge” episodes he produced would pose “an imminent threat to life and safety of active police officers” if released in their current form. For example, the complaint says “faces, voices and names of undercover officers conducting operations in plainclothes are not obscured.”
City lawyers argue that McGraw intends to distribute footage showing faces of witnesses, crime victims and persons in custody without their consent — and even reveals a secret passcode to a station house door.
According to the lawsuit, Jordan McGraw and his production company “blatantly disregarded” a clause in their contract giving the city power to preview rough cuts of episodes and, within 10 days, veto any portions they deem “unusable” for confidentiality or public safety reasons.
The city’s filing says McGraw submitted four rough-cut episodes and a larger “unedited footage dump” in December and indicated he was looking to sell the footage for air in 2026 despite objections raised by Adams’ office on three occasions including Dec. 31, his last day in office.
The lawsuit seeks to block McGraw and his production company from selling or distributing what it calls “extremely problematic” material in a project that was “intended to highlight the Department’s extraordinary work” but would instead “undoubtedly tarnish their reputation.”
Chip Babcock, a lawyer for Jordan McGraw, told NBC New York in a statement “it appears that the City is seeking to restrain publication on a matter of public concern forgetting perhaps that prior restraints are presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment.”
In a statement posted on social media, Adams said McGraw “brought exceptional talent in revealing the inside story of the dangers NYPD officers face every day. He and his team meticulously addressed every concern raised by City Hall.
“I’m proud that the work they did tells the real story of our brave police officers,” the former mayor continued. “Heroes don’t wear capes, they wear blue uniforms. I understood that. I hope America will get to see that too.”
The NYPD had no comment when contacted by NBC New York.
The current status of the relationship between Adams and Jordan McGraw isn’t clear. If McGraw disregarded the terms of the “Behind the Badge” contract he signed with City Hall — a copy of which was attached to the court filing and signed by former Adams Deputy Mayor Camille Joseph Varlack — as the lawsuit alleges, it was despite an apparently lucrative arrangement with Adams’ re-election campaign.
The contract for the show was signed on the day after a judge dismissed the federal corruption case against Adams.
The lawsuit comes just five days after NBC New York reported McGraw was linked to Fairfax Digital LLC, which campaign filings show received $500,000 in payments from the 2025 Eric Adams campaign. The campaign filings did not disclose McGraw’s identity, which was confirmed by Adams’ former campaign manager Eugene Noh during an unrelated interview.
According to Adams’ campaign filings with the Campaign Finance Board, Fairfax Digital LLC is based in Wichita Falls, Texas, where Jordan McGraw is from, but Texas records show no evidence of any company with that name. Jordan McGaw did not respond to NBC New York’s efforts to obtain comment about Fairfax Digital LLC.
The government watchdog group Reinvent Albany said that payments by the Adams campaign to LLCs “without clear human owners” were concerning.
New York Department of State records show McGraw registered “Behind the Badge LLC” in Sept. 2024, about two weeks before Mayor Adams was charged with bribery and campaign crimes that were eventually dismissed by the President Trump’s Department of Justice. Adams consistently said he did nothing wrong.
Two administration insiders familiar with the project said it was unclear exactly why the unusual NYPD access for Jordan McGraw was moving forward at the urging of Adams, with the NYPD given no choice in the matter. They say it was during the Fall of 2024 that McGraw’s father Dr. Phil — a vocal Trump supporter — first started expressing interest in highlighting the work of the NYPD and producing some shows of his own on the subject.
Dr. Phil also appeared alongside Adams in 2025 to discuss the fight against antisemitism and took credit for connecting the then-mayor with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan.
