Their “pillow talk” could be fair game.
Saturday’s Martha’s Vineyard wedding of embattled Big Apple schools Chancellor David Banks and First Deputy Mayor Sheena may appear to give the pair cover in a potential federal criminal case — but experts say the marriage doesn’t completely shield them.
The longtime loves’ nuptials — which occurred the day after Mayor Eric Adams appeared in Manhattan federal court on sweeping corruption charges — prompted murmurs that the pair married to claim legal “spousal privilege,” or the right of a wedded couple to decline to testify against each other.
But experts said the privilege designed to protect “pillow talk” is unlikely to help Banks and Wright — and could even backfire, opening them up to an obstruction-of-justice charge if the feds find evidence they wed to avoid testifying.
“Spouses generally have the right to refuse to testify against one another in federal cases, but that privilege disappears when both are co-defendants in the same criminal matter,” said Duncan Levin, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor.
Levin noted that married couples can’t claim “spousal privilege” if the feds ask them to divulge communications that they had before they were married, which Banks and Wright weren’t until this weekend.
The most likely scenario is that Banks’ and Wright’s marriage is “highly unlikely to change anything whatsoever,” he said of the pair — whose Harlem home was raided by the feds earlier this month, when both their phones were also seized, as part of a murky probe.
“If this is some grand Machiavellian scheme, it’s very likely not to work,” Levin said.
Banks and Wright have been in a relationship for more than a decade, with rumors swirling that they planned a wedding last summer but never quite got to the “I dos.”
Their relationship status came under renewed public scrutiny Sept. 4, when federal agents raided their Harlem home, seizing their phones.
The raid unfolded nearly simultaneously with others across the city that swept up former NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban and Banks’ brother Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, among other top Adams officials and allies.
Sources have detailed tantalizing but still vague details about potential multiple corruption investigations into Adams’ inner circle — and with an uncertain connection with the probe that ultimately led to the mayor’s historic federal criminal charges.
The timing of David Banks’ and Wright’s wedding not even a month later raised eyebrows among legal watchers, with criminal defense lawyer Jeff Greco telling The Post that the marriage appeared to be a bid to “frustrate” the sweeping federal probe.
But other lawyers warned that spousal privilege isn’t a cure-all for Banks’ and Wright’s potential problems.
“Generally speaking, the spousal privilege only protects communications within the marriage,” tweeted Andrew Fleischman, a defense lawyer.
“You can’t just marry everybody you rob a bank with and hope they don’t snitch.”
Anna Cominsky, managing attorney of New York Law School Legal Services, said the privilege only stands if the marriage is “legitimate.
“You can imagine that here, the government might try and allege that the parties entered into a fraudulent marriage, a marriage whose sole purpose was to invoke the privilege and not for legitimate reasons, and therefore, the parties can be compelled to testify against each other,” she told The Post.
Experts said to expect that the Manhattan US Attorneys Office, which is behind much of the federal investigations into Adams and his top officials, is well-versed in navigating such spousal privilege issues.
The issue came up in the feds’ recent successful prosecution of former New Jersey Sen. “Gold Bar Bob” Menendez, who tried to blame his wife Nadine for the gold bars found in their home.
Menendez’s lawyers attempted to cite spousal privilege in a bid to have the husband and wife tried separately, arguing that the senator had the right not to testify against his wife in their case.
The judge ended up using other criteria to split the case up.
Menendez was convicted on all counts in July, and Nadine’s case is pending.
