NYC Mayor Adams’ Corruption Case Is Permanently Dismissed (3)

A federal judge dismissed corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams but sharply criticized the Trump administration’s move to drop the case.

The decision — capping an extraordinary series of events that sowed discord within the US Justice Department — specifies that the case against Adams, the first sitting New York City mayor in modern history to be charged with federal crimes, can’t be refiled later. In his ruling Wednesday, US District Judge Dale Ho sternly rejected the government’s bid to leave that door open.

Ho’s decision is a mixed result for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which sought to have the case dismissed “without prejudice,” meaning it could be revived down the road. That move sparked accusations that the administration was using leverage to force the mayor to cooperate with its agenda — something both the government and Adams denied.

‘Unavoidable Perception’

“Dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents,” the judge wrote.

The dismissal comes less than three months before the June 24 Democratic primary election in the New York City mayoral race, in which about a dozen candidates are vying to unseat Adams. The mayor was indicted in September for allegedly accepting illegal campaign donations and taking luxury travel upgrades in exchange for political favors to the Turkish government. He pleaded not guilty and resisted calls to step down, claiming the charges were politically motivated.

His lawyer Alex Spiro hailed Wednesday’s dismissal.

“The case against Eric Adams should have never been brought in the first place — and finally today that case is gone forever,” Spiro said in a statement. “From Day 1, the mayor has maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorkers has prevailed.”

‘Government Gangsters’

In a brief address outside Gracie Mansion after the dismissal, Adams held up a copy of Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel’s book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy, which is critical of federal law enforcement, and said he found the “rationale” behind the case in the book.

A Justice Department spokesperson called the prosecution “an example of political weaponization and a waste of resources” and said the department was returning to “its core mission of keeping Americans safe.”

While it didn’t get the option it sought to revive the case, the very fact that the Justice Department — long regarded as independent of the White House — sought such an outcome underscores how quickly Trump is forcing change at Justice, along with the rest of the government.

In ordering prosecutors in Manhattan to file for the dismissal of the case, the department had claimed it was politically driven and prevented the mayor from tackling the Trump administration priorities of illegal immigration and violent crime. The directive led to a tense standoff between government attorneys in New York and Justice Department officials in Washington and spurred several resignations.

“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” the judge said of the Manhattan prosecutors who brought the case. He wrote that “everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” calling the government’s immigration enforcement argument “unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep.”

Dale Ho

Photographer: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Ho said he lacks the authority to appoint a special prosecutor to continue the case and can’t order the Justice Department to pursue a case it refuses to prosecute.

Prominent Conservative

Instead, the judge had appointed former US Solicitor General Paul Clement, a respected conservative who has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court, to review the case and advise him on how to proceed. Clement said forcing the Justice Department to prosecute would be “futile” but recommended the case be permanently dismissed, rather than subject to revival as the US wanted — points Ho endorsed in his opinion.

The judge issued his ruling shortly after Spiro urged him to “promptly reach a decision” because Adams’ petitions to declare himself a candidate in the election are due Thursday. Although the dismissal spares Adams, 64, a criminal trial, his political future may be limited. A string of recent polls have shown him losing the primary election by a wide margin.

The Justice Department’s decision to drop the prosecution followed the mayor’s efforts to court Trump, meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and attending his inauguration, although Adams has said the two didn’t discuss the case. Trump, who has claimed that his own criminal cases were political vendettas by former President Joe Biden’s Justice Department and by other Democrats, had expressed sympathy for the mayor.

The courtship was followed by a Jan. 31 meeting in Washington between the mayor’s legal team, Justice Department staff and prosecutors from the Manhattan US attorney’s office. Then, on Feb. 10, Emil Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Trump who was then the acting deputy attorney general, directed interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon to withdraw the case.

‘I’m Going to Win’

The move by Bove, himself a former colleague of Sassoon’s in the Manhattan office, was a rare instance of strong-arming an office known for operating independently from the Justice Department in Washington and that made its name prosecuting big Wall Street cases and white collar criminals. Sassoon resigned a few days later, followed by others.

Meanwhile, Adams’ political fate remains up in the air. After his remarks outside Gracie Mansion on Wednesday, the mayor responded to a shouted question about his re-election campaign, saying he was still planning to run.

“And I’m going to win,” he said.

The case is US v. Adams, 24-cr-556, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(Adds quotes, context and background throughout, starting in third section.)

--With assistance from Chris Strohm, Laura Nahmias, Jazper Lu, Katia Porzecanski and Hadriana Lowenkron.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Chris Dolmetsch in Federal Court in Manhattan at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net;
Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net;
Ava Benny-Morrison in New York at abennymorris@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Anthony Lin at alin364@bloomberg.net;
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Peter Jeffrey, Anthony Aarons

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