Newlywed Adams officials David Banks, Sheena Wright may not get pillow talk privilege in fed probe: experts

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 unfolde...