The Justice Department’s efforts to dismiss federal charges against Mayor Eric Adams, in apparent exchange for his cooperation on Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, continues to wreak havoc in New York and Washington, D.C. After seven DOJ officials resigned in protest, the Justice Department was finally able to file to drop the charges on Friday evening, but federal judge Dale Ho will still need to sign off. Meanwhile, the calls for Adams to resign are growing, as is the pressure on Governor Kathy Hochul, who has the power to remove Adams from office. Below are the latest developments.
The New York Times has confirmed Reuter’s earlier report and added some additional details. During a video call with lawyers in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section on Friday morning, Bove demanded that his motion to dismiss the charges against Mayor Adams be signed within an hour — and they perceived that meant there would be consequences if that didn’t happen:
Before being summoned for the tense meeting, lawyers in the section debated their bad options, but came to increasingly believe that someone should step forward to save the jobs of the others, people familiar with the discussions said. …
Part of the consideration for Justice Department lawyers is whether simply signing the document would mean risking their bar license, since major ethical objections have already been made to dropping the case. But in those private discussions, many of the lawyers believed it would be a worse outcome if all the section’s lawyers were fired or forced to resign over the Adams case.
Ultimately someone did step forward: longtime DOJ prosecutor Ed Sullivan, who reportedly agreed to file the motion in order to protect his colleagues.
As the New York Times points out, federal judges usually accept government requests to drop charges and have virtually no legal power to do otherwise. It’s however likely Ho will hold a hearing on the matter, and it’s possible he could eventually write an opinion criticizing the highly suspicious request, even if he can’t legally reject it. It’s not yet clear what will happen. One law professor who spoke with the Times thinks Ho will not be pleased:
“Judge Ho could say this is a politically motivated decision and it affronts the grand jury process and the integrity of the court,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University School of Law. …
Professor Gillers said Mr. Bove’s rationale for seeking dismissal of the charges would not sit well with the judge.
“Judge Ho will not accept that — should not accept that — as the justification for throwing out a grand jury decision to indict.”
It looks like deputy attorney general Bove got two DOJ officials to make the request, Criminal Division official (and former U.S. attorney) Antoinette T. Bacon, and Edward Sullivan from the Public Integrity Section.
Now they will have to see how the judge responds.
More and more people from the New York political world are publicly calling for the mayor to step down or be removed.
• New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams, who would take over as mayor if Adams resigns or is removed, said Friday that he hoped Adams would resign, noting that “he cannot be the mayor of this city and govern this city the way it needs to be governed.”
• Queens state senator John Liu called on Governor Hochul to “come to the defense of your constituents” and remove Adams if he doesn’t resign.
• “Mayor Adams has put this city and all of our people in jeopardy to save himself,” Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso also said Friday. “Governor Hochul must end this chaos and remove Eric Adams — now.”
• On Thursday, Representative Nydia Velazquez called Sassoon’s claims “damning” and added that “NYC can’t be led by someone under Trump’s thumb and willing to sell out New Yorkers. Mayor Adams must resign.”
• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed those words in her own post, writing, “Trump wields this leverage over Adams, the city is endangered. We cannot be governed under coercion. If Adams won’t resign, he must be removed.”
• Mike Gianaris, the deputy leader of the State Senate, also called out the mayor on social media, saying that if Adams himself doesn’t step down, Hochul should take steps to remove him:
• Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado has also been emphatic that Adams’s tenure must come to an end:
Hochul herself has called the allegations against Adams “extremely concerning and serious,” but stopped short of calling for the mayor to step down. The governor, however, did not explicitly rule out using her office’s obscure power to unilaterally remove Adams as mayor.
He also waved off the significance of the federal prosecutors quitting over the move, describing them as “mostly people from the previous administration” who “were all going to be gone or dismissed.”
The mayor released a statement denying the multiple reports, and the account of now former U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon, that his lawyers offered his cooperation on Trump’s immigration crackdown in exchange for dropping the charges against him: “I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”
Also worth noting:
She appeared on Fox News from Munich on Friday afternoon. “He is about to get back his security clearance,” she said of the case. To be clear, the charges against Adams can’t be dismissed until the judge overseeing the case signs off.
According to Reuters, a veteran career prosecutor at the DOJ’s public integrity unit, Ed Sullivan, volunteered to dismiss the charges, following a pressure campaign by deputy attorney general Emil Bove. Sources told Reuters that Sullivan to protect his colleagues:
“This is not a capitulation-this is a coercion,” one of the people briefed on the meeting later told Reuters. “That person, in my mind, is a hero.” Sullivan’s decision came after the attorneys in the meeting contemplated resigning en masse, rather than filing the motion to dismiss, another source briefed on the matter told Reuters. There are approximately 30 attorneys in the Public Integrity Section.
CNBC reports that Bove met via video with the attorneys in the unit, and offered a promotion to those who agreed to sign the dismissal — then gave them an hour to provide the names of two prosecutors who would do it. It’s not clear if another prosecutor has agreed along with Sullivan.
In addition to Fox News, the mayor and Trump border czar Tom Homan also sat for an interview with Dr. Phil on Friday morning. At one point, Adams seemed to expressed his gratitude to the Trump administration: “I’m really pleased to have this collaboration because it was almost as though I was crying out in the wind and this administration heard it.”
She otherwise declined to comment on the Adams case during a Friday press conference on the state’s efforts to block DOGE’s U.S. Treasury access.
“At this point, there’s a number of discussions going on, discussions going on at the state level, discussions going on at the local level, private discussions,” the state attorney general said. “I’m going to refrain from any comment until such time as we complete those discussions and determine the fate of the mayor of the city of New York.”
The disgraced former governor published a valentine of sorts:
According to Reuters sources, “a federal prosecutor agreed on Friday to file a motion to dismiss the criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in a bid to spare other career staff from potentially being fired by the acting deputy attorney general.”
In case there was any doubt after Mayor Adams’s comments:
Ross Barkan writes about the governor’s precarious predicament:
Adams is fast becoming a national embarrassment for Hochul. The Trump administration currently commands remarkable leverage over New York City; Bondi can essentially hold Adams hostage, threatening to revive the charges if the flailing mayor does not comply with every last policy demand. Not that Adams would feel that way; he seems to revel in his status as a favorite MAGA son and has giddily met with Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and even appeared with him on Fox News. He’s ready to bring ICE everywhere possible and endanger New York’s status as a sanctuary city. And this week, the federal government clawed back $80 million meant to house migrants, with Adams uttering not a word in protest.
Hochul has quietly made the municipal government functional again; she effectively ordered Adams to hire Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and elevate Maria Torres-Springer, a capable bureaucrat, to first deputy mayor. Hochul is also believed to have ordered the purging of several high-level Adams officials who were tainted by various corruption probes. For several months, that seemed sufficient. Hochul, a white woman from Buffalo, did not want to be seen as the politician who forced Adams, a Black man from Brooklyn, out of City Hall — not when she had to sweat the support of Black voters in the five boroughs in a 2026 statewide primary. Black civil rights and clergy leaders were certainly uncomfortable with the duly elected Adams, yet to be convicted of any corruption charges, being marched from Gracie Mansion.
Now the calculus shifts. Hochul will feel renewed pressure, especially from her left flank, to act. But it is certainly not easy to decide to unilaterally remove a sitting mayor in an election year. Hochul is already in the midst of trying to negotiate personally with Trump to save congestion pricing while straining to beat back Bondi’s lawsuit against the state’s policy of granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants — a local law that also prevents federal law enforcement officials from accessing motor vehicle records.
Read the rest here.
Former U.S. Attorneys Harry Litman and Barb McQuade posted to social media on Friday claiming that the Justice Department has gathered top public integrity attorneys — the figures overseeing the prosecution of federal crimes affecting government integrity. They have been given one hour for one of them to sign a motion to dismiss Adams’s case; if none of them do, all will be fired.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, a conservative Republican, combat veteran, and former clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, submitted his resignation on Friday. Scotten led the office’s investigation into Eric Adams and is the seventh DOJ official to quit in two days.
“No system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives,” he wrote in his resignation letter. He also excoriated the effort to find someone to dismiss the case:
The Friday morning joint appearance by the mayor and Trump “border czar” Tom Homan is only going to feed the political flames for Adams, as I note in my new post. This was how Adams tried to dismiss the claims that his lawyers had worked out a quid pro quo with the Trump DOJ:
“Think about my attorney Alex Spiro, one of the top trial attorneys in the country. Imagine him going inside saying that, ‘the only way Mayor Adams is going to assist in immigration’ — which I was calling for since 2022 — ‘is if you drop the charges.’ That’s quid pro quo. That’s a crime,” he said.
Adams continued, “It took her three weeks to report in front of her a criminal action? Come on, this is silly.”
And then this happened:
The interview ended with Homan making it clear that he and Adams’s friendly relationship could change depending on how he addresses immigration in his city. “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on a couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?, he said.’”
Adams appeared to laugh with Homan and the Fox hosts. “And I want ICE to deliver. We’re going to deliver for the safety of this city,” the mayor said.
