Lawyer Recommends Dropping Corruption Case Against Mayor Adams

Back in early February, Deputy AG Emil Bove asked interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan Danielle R. Sassoon to drop the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams. Sassoon refused and resigned after sending a letter to AG Pam Bondi saying that the government was proposing a quid pro quo in which Adams would have the case against him dropped in exchange for his cooperation with the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Mr. Bove, in ordering Ms. Sassoon to seek the dismissal, said explicitly that the directive was not related to the strength of the evidence or any legal theories. Instead, he said, the prosecution was hindering the mayor’s cooperation on immigration.

Both Mr. Bove and Mr. Adams’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, have vigorously denied that any deal preceded the motion to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams, a Democrat. The mayor was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He has pleaded not guilty.

But rather than drop the case, the judge overseeing it said he needed an outside opinion to preserve the adversarial system.

Judge Ho noted in his order on Friday that, with a top Justice Department official and the mayor’s lawyers agreeing the case should end, he needed to hear other arguments.

“Normally, courts are aided in their decision-making through our system of adversarial testing,” Judge Ho wrote, “which can be particularly helpful in cases presenting unusual fact patterns or in case of great public importance.”

The outside lawyer who was given the job of reviewing the case Paul D. Clement, a former Solicitor General for the G.W. Bush administration. Today, Clement recommend that Judge Ho drop the case with prejudice.

A lawyer who was asked to offer independent arguments on the U.S. Justice Department’s motion to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York told a judge on Friday that he should end the prosecution.

But the lawyer, Paul D. Clement, said the judge should not allow the Trump administration to use the threat of criminal charges to compel Mr. Adams’s political support. He recommended that the case be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the charges could not be brought again.

Mr. Clement’s brief could spell the end of the long-running case against the mayor, the first to be indicted in modern New York history. Though the judge, Dale E. Ho, is not legally bound to accept Mr. Clement’s recommendation, his guidance will likely be influential given that the judge requested that he weigh in.

So this will likely be the end of the case against Mayor Adams which is obviously good news for him, but it doesn’t mean that he has a realistic chance of running for reelection. On the contrary, he is already behaving as if he’s not running.

The mayor has taken few concrete steps to launch a serious campaign, even as he faces a growing field of prominent challengers in the June 24 primary, less than four months away.

Mr. Adams has not held any campaign events this year. He has no campaign manager. His fund-raising has slowed. The painstaking petition process to get mayoral candidates’ names on the ballot began late last month, yet the mayor’s signature-gathering operation appears to be limited.

Two key advisers, Evan Thies and Nathan Smith, have not joined his re-election campaign and declined to comment about whether they would return.

As for the Trump administration, they may yet get some cooperation on immigration from the Mayor, especially if he doesn’t plan to face the voters again. But that also means cooperation with the Trump administration could come to a swift halt once a successor is elected later this year.