On Wednesday afternoon, New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrived at a federal courthouse in lower Manhattan for what may be the last hearing in his criminal case. US District Judge Dale Ho heard arguments from Adams’ lawyer and deputy US attorney Emil Bove over the Department of Justice’s request that the bribery and fraud charges against Adam be dismissed. The extraordinary development in Adams’ legal case led to the resignations of seven federal prosecutors and escalating calls for the mayor to resign or be removed from office.
Characteristically defiant, Adams seemed unperturbed as he strode into the wood-panelled courtroom. Ho had set the last-minute hearing just yesterday. Bove, the second highest-ranking official in Trump’s Department of Justice, had traveled to New York City to personally defend the motion. Ho, who was nominated to the bench by former President Joe Biden in 2023, acknowledged that his authority to deny the request was narrow and told the parties that he wanted to “proceed carefully.”
After being indicted on charges stemming in part from illegal campaign contributions last September, Adams has insisted that he was unfairly targeted for political reasons. Still, Adams publicly courted President Donald Trump after the November election and has shown a willingness to cooperate with the administration’s sweeping immigration enforcement plans. In his letter ordering prosecutors to drop the charges, Bove made the unusual argument that the case had “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to address illegal immigration and violent crime.
In a remarkable move, the acting head of the Manhattan US attorney’s office, Danielle Sassoon, resigned rather than heed orders to dismiss the case, claiming that Adams’ lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo” during one meeting. The accusation that the charges are being dropped in exchange for Adams’ cooperation on Trump’s immigration priorities have been widely echoed by the mayor’s critics, including the city’s Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Brad Lander (who is challenging Adams in the mayoral primary). The Department of Justice is requesting that the case be dropped without prejudice, meaning that the charges can be brought again—which has only fueled concerns that the Trump administration could use the threat of prosecution to exert influence over Adams.
Ho, at times deferential to Bove, prodded at the Department of Justice’s reasons for dismissing the case. Bove argued that dismissing the case is “a standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion” and that the judge had a straightforward decision to make.
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