How Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” Video Led to a $1.9 Million Money Trail Tied to Eric Adams’s Former Chief of Staff

A music video filmed inside this Williamsburg church became the beginning of a much bigger story about parish money and New York political connections. Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” used Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church as a setting for its theatrical funeral scene. The controversy over that filming prompted a broader diocesan review. That review later identified $1.9 million in unauthorized transfers to entities affiliated with Frank Carone, a former chief of staff to Mayor Eric Adams. The connection is real, but its sequence matters. The building stands at North 5th and Havemeyer streets in Brooklyn. It belongs to the combined Our Lady of Mount Carmel–Annunciation parish, which can make the location confusing in news reports. The filming church was Annunciation, not the parish’s other church building. From the sidewalk, its brick facade is a concrete anchor for a story that soon moved into bank transactions, diocesan rules and federal courtrooms. Those later developments should not erase the distinction between the particular building and the larger parish institution. The video was released on October 31, 2023. News 12 reported that diocesan officials objected to the scenes and said filming procedures had not been followed, including review of the proposed material. What worked as a provocative pop-culture setting was, for the diocese, an active sanctuary subject to church oversight. The immediate dispute was therefore about how filming had been authorized and what had been depicted inside a religious space. It was not an accusation that Carpenter had participated in a financial crime. According to the diocesan account reported by The Tablet, Bishop Robert Brennan removed Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello’s administrative and financial oversight responsibilities after the video controversy. The circumstances also prompted a wider compliance review. That is the important causal link supported by the reporting: scrutiny of the filming led church authorities to examine other parish practices. It is a substantial story without turning it into the far broader claim that one music video single-handedly caused a mayoral corruption prosecution. On November 18, 2024, the diocese announced findings concerning transfers made between 2019 and 2021. Investigators said Gigantiello had moved a total of $1.9 million in parish funds to entities affiliated with Carone without diocesan knowledge or approval. The Tablet reported both the bishop’s criticism and the priest’s response. Gigantiello defended the transactions as investments that benefited the parish and said he understood the approval rule differently. A fair account includes that disagreement while identifying whose findings were being announced. The figures were large enough to change the scale of the story. This was no longer simply a dispute about a video’s taste or a filming fee. Church authorities were describing decisions about substantial institutional funds and whether required permission had been obtained. The relevant findings were about diocesan policies and governance. A church investigation can justify changes in a priest’s responsibilities without being the equivalent of a criminal verdict. That distinction becomes especially important once politically connected borrowers enter the narrative. Carone’s former job explains why the parish review attracted attention beyond Williamsburg. He had been Adams’s chief of staff, placing the reported transactions within the orbit of a prominent city administration. But an association between people is not proof that every controversy involving them belongs to one conspiracy. The parish transfers, the mayor’s federal case and a later prosecution of Carone need to be understood on their own terms. The church is a shared point in the public story, not a substitute for tracing the evidence in each proceeding. Adams’s own federal prosecution also did not remain in its original 2024 posture. On April 2, 2025, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho dismissed that indictment with prejudice. The court’s order is a necessary correction to accounts that still describe the original case as an unresolved prosecution. Dismissal with prejudice ended that case and prevented the same charges from simply being refiled. It was not a jury verdict finding guilt, and it should not be recast as one when explaining how the church story intersected with political headlines. A separate development arrived on June 24, 2026. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York announced an indictment charging Carone and three others over an alleged bribery scheme involving a city migrant-shelter contract. The Justice Department described thirteen counts across the defendants and alleged that influence and payments were used to steer public business. Those were prosecutors’ allegations, not findings of guilt. The announcement concerned the shelter-contract scheme; it did not establish that Carpenter’s video or the parish loans were the charged bribery transaction. Putting the dates in order changes the familiar viral version. The video appeared in 2023. The diocese announced its financial findings in 2024. Adams’s indictment was dismissed in 2025. Carone was charged in a separate case in 2026. Compressing all four moments into “Sabrina exposed Eric Adams” produces an irresistible slogan at the cost of the actual history. The documented chain is still unusual enough: an argument over filming in a sanctuary opened a wider institutional review whose findings touched a politically connected lawyer. Annunciation remains the geographic starting point for that chain of public attention. Its significance lies in how an ordinary decision about access to a building escalated into scrutiny of who could authorize the use of church space and church money. The video controversy and the financial findings belong in the same account because the diocese connected them through its review. The separate legal cases belong alongside that account with their dates and limits intact. The church’s surprising story is strongest when the connections are made precisely.