New York City mayor Eric Adams has spent much of the past several months attempting to cozy up to Donald Trump, and it now looks as though that effort has paid off. The Justice Department has asked federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop the corruption charges against Adams, seemingly ending the legal — if not the political — jeopardy the mayor faces. Below are the immediate reactions to the news and Adams’s first official comments as they happened.
On Tuesday, Adams gave his first public remarks on the Justice Department’s move to drop his pending case in a livestreamed address that was closed to the media. The mayor spoke directly to New Yorkers, reiterating his innocence, saying the past 15 months have been an “unnecessary ordeal” for him, his family, and the city.
“As I said from the outset, I never broke the law, and I never would. I would never put any personal benefit above my solemn responsibility as your mayor,” he said.
Adams alleged that “sensational and false claims” have circulated around this case and that he never directed anyone to break the law on the behalf of him or his campaign. “No witness ever came forward publicly to make claims against me. None of the baseless threats from prosecutors of new charges and new evidence ever materialized, and this case will no longer continue,” he said.
The mayor acknowledged that he will have to work to regain the trust of many New Yorkers but insisted he never lost his focus on the city throughout this legal process and that the local government “has never been stronger.” “Now, we can put this cruel episode behind us and focus entirely on the future of our city. It’s time to move forward,” Adams said.
Earlier this year, Adams sparked speculation after he didn’t explicitly rule out returning to the Republican Party after more than a decade as a registered Democrat. A new report suggests he is continuing to keep that particular door open.
The New York Post asked John Catsimatidis, the Republican businessman who personally broke the Justice Department news to Adams last night during dinner, if the mayor might eye a party change after the Trump administration moved in his favor. “He’s definitely thinking … keeping options open,” he told the outlet.
For Intelligencer, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig dug into what may come next following the Justice Department’s shocking move:
So where does the case go from here? Could the acting U.S. attorney for the SDNY, Danielle Sassoon, take an Elliot Richardson–like stand and resign rather than carry out a corrupt order? Don’t count on it. (I don’t know Sassoon; she started at the SDNY after I left.) Just last week, she penned a bizarre op-ed criticizing Biden’s pardons. The substance of the article is fine, if conspicuously untimely. But the fact that she wrote such an overtly political screed sent SDNY alum text chains blazing, “WTF,” “embarrassing,” and “pandering bullshit” among the most common reactions. And even if the acting U.S. Attorney did take a principled stand, she’d surely be fired and replaced with somebody who would dismiss the case as directed by the bosses in D.C. A protest resignation would make a statement, but it wouldn’t alter the fate of the Adams case.
Read the rest here.
Reactions to the Justice Department’s stunning decision to order Adams’s federal bribery case to be dropped began to pour in from state and city politicians.
Representative Nydia Velázquez blasted the decision on social media. “The allegations against Eric Adams were serious and deserved real scrutiny. Dropping these charges sets a dangerous precedent and makes a mockery of our legal system,” she wrote. “Instead of fighting for NYC, the Mayor has been busy cozying up to Trump. New Yorkers deserve better.”
Representative Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor, accused the Trump administration of politicizing the legal process:
In an interview with Spectrum News, Representative Jerry Nadler called the Justice Department’s action an “obvious quid pro quo” between Adams and Trump. “The mayor has been cozying up to the president and will not criticize him in any way and says he’ll help enforce his obnoxious immigration policies in New York City. And the president has reciprocated,” he said.
Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest accused the mayor of currying favor with Trump in order to solve his legal predicament. “In case any doubt remains, yes, Eric Adams literally sold out New York City and its people to save himself. Trump just effectively made himself Mayor of New York City. Adams is merely a puppet for Trump,” she wrote.
Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told CBS New York that he didn’t believe the federal government had a strong case against the mayor. “A very weak case, in my opinion, was brought. A strangely weak case. So from my point of view, it’s right for the Justice Department to say, ‘There’s not enough here to go on, and there’s an election in four and a half months, and they need to step back,” he said.
The Justice Department advocating for the dismissal of Adams’s pending bribery case appears to be the result of the mayor’s significant overtures to President Trump over the past few months. The two native New Yorkers shared a dais during the annual Al Smith Memorial Dinner in Manhattan back in October with Trump commiserating with Adams over their legal troubles in his remarks. “We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so were you, Eric,” he said at the time.
As Trump’s praise of Adams grew more frequent and more public, Adams consistently declined to push back on his words when given the opportunity. Unlike his fellow Democrats in the city, the mayor made an active effort to reach out to Trump and his team, making it clear that he intended to work with the new administration, even with the president’s controversial border czar Tom Homan.
Ahead of Trump taking office for his second term, Adams flew down to Florida for a meeting with the incoming president. In January, Adams dropped several scheduled appearances for Martin Luther King Jr. Day events to attend Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C. Just days ago, Adams returned to the nation’s capital again to attend the National Prayer Breakfast headlined by the president.
A joint PIX11–Emerson College poll released just days earlier gave some insight into how the average New Yorker may feel about the Justice Department’s moving to drop Adams’s bribery case.
Forty-nine percent of respondents said they would oppose Adams’s charges being dropped, while 27 percent said they would support the move. Twenty-four percent of voters polled said they had no opinion.
State senator Zellnor Myrie:
Former comptroller Scott Stringer:
State senator Jessica Ramos:
Eric Adams sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom, but he’ll never escape the label of worst mayor in NYC history. Donald Trump may think this buys him access to terrorize our communities, but New Yorkers always stand up for one another, no matter how many corrupt narcissists try to hurt our families.
Zohran Mamdani:
Today, @NYCMayor instructed his top officials not to criticize Donald Trump. And now we know why. Instead of standing up for New Yorkers, Mayor Adams is standing up for precisely one person — and that’s himself. New Yorkers deserve better.
We don’t know yet. Reports the New York Times:
For the people in the mayor’s orbit who may be cooperating against him in hopes of reducing their own criminal exposure, prosecutors could decide to drop any charges against them as well, to avoid any claims of unfair treatment, legal experts said.
“Now that the main guy is gone, there will be some level of pressure to reconsider the less-culpable people and decide whether it makes sense to continue to prosecute them,” said Mark Chutkow, a former federal prosecutor in Detroit who supervised corruption cases against local officials …
Outside of the potential cooperators, there are still separate investigations into the mayor’s associates that can proceed if federal prosecutors determine that these associates committed crimes unrelated to the charges that have been dismissed against the mayor, legal experts said.
Part of the New York City public advocate’s scathing statement in response to the news:
The mayor has always had the presumption of innocence — something he has rarely extended to the New Yorkers he’s detained on Rikers pre-trial, or wanted deported based on accusations. He said he wanted his day in court, but instead sidestepped that system using the privilege and power that so few people have access to. This is obscene and obvious — the White House doesn’t want to lose their deputy in New York City.
It seems clear that the person we’ve had in City Hall the last several months is the real Eric Adams, and New Yorkers shouldn’t forget that.
As Law360’s Frank Runyeon points out:
Regarding the judge, Politico reports:
[H]ow much power the jurist has to push back on prosecutors’ request to drop the case is an open question. While some legal experts said Ho’s hands are tied, others believe he could outright refuse.
“The ‘leave of court’ requirement exists precisely to guard against the dubious, perhaps corrupt, dismissal of cases against powerful and well-connected defendants,” said Thomas Frampton, an associate law professor at the University of Virginia.
Acting deputy attorney general Bove also said the case should be dismissed without prejudice — which leaves open the possibility that the charges could be refiled some day.
Not that shattered norms should ever come as a surprise when Donald Trump is president, the Associated Press underlines just how abnormal this is:
The memo is a radical departure from longstanding Justice Department norms, both in terms of the directive to dismiss an already-charged case that prosecutors had already deemed meritorious and because of its stated rationale that a powerful defendant could be too occupied with official duties to face accountability for alleged crimes.
Per the Times, Bove “said that the removal of Mr. Adams’s security clearance, a result of the indictment, had impeded his capacity to consult with Trump administration officials on carrying out immigration enforcement activities in the nation’s largest city.”
The New York Times reports that the Justice Department on Monday told federal prosecutors to drop the charges as soon as possible, which the publication calls a “remarkable intervention” by a DOJ political appointee:
It is not clear how Danielle R. Sassoon, the interim U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, will respond to the order to drop the case.
Any motion to dismiss the charges must be filed in court and reviewed by the judge overseeing the case.
In a memo sent to prosecutors in Manhattan, Emil Bove, the Justice Department’s acting No. 2 official, accused the former U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, who oversaw the investigation, of bringing the charges for political gain.
He provided no evidence for that accusation but said that the charges were part of what he described as the Biden administration’s broader pattern of weaponizing the department for partisan purposes.
As Errol Louis recently pointed out, Adams is barely holding on to to even a semblance of power in the city:
The political vacuum at City Hall was in full view this week, with the Trump administration’s new mass-deportation campaign including a visit from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to personally supervise immigration raids and arrests in midtown and the Bronx. “Dirtbags like this will continue to be removed from our streets,” Noem boasted on social media, sharing a video of a man being led away in handcuffs.
The NYPD did not participate in the raid, and normally, it would be unthinkable to see that kind of high-profile federal action on city streets without involvement or comment from City Hall. But Adams has already made it clear that he will not be saying anything publicly that might displease Trump.
“I’ve said it before: I’m not going to be warring with the president. I’m going to be working with the president. And that’s my responsibility as the mayor,” Adams told reporters. “If I do disagree, I will communicate with him directly on them,” said Adams. “I don’t want to be part of what feeds the anxiety of going back and forth in this public discourse that we’re seeing. If [there are] things that he does that I disagree on, I will reach out to the president and communicate with him.”
Adams said this a day after he canceled multiple Martin Luther King Jr. Day appearances and instead raced to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration, where he watched Trump’s swearing-in from an overflow room in the Capitol and later had lunch with top Republicans.
Read the rest of Louis’s column here.
