Federal Judge Ho dismisses public corruption case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams 'with prejudice'

NEW YORK — A federal judge on Wednesday permanently dismissed the sweeping public corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams — outright denying “with prejudice” an effort by Donald Trump’s Justice Department to keep open the possibility of bringing them again.

Manhattan Federal Judge Dale Ho’s decision was not based on the merits of the case against Adams or a belief of whether he was innocent or guilty. It did serve as a searing condemnation of the Justice Department’s position that it could drop the case to procure the mayor’s cooperation on immigration matters, which he called “disturbing in its breadth.”

“DOJ’s immigration enforcement rationale is both unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep. DOJ cites no examples, and the Court is unable to find any, of the government dismissing charges against an elected official because doing so would enable the official to facilitate federal policy goals,” Ho wrote.

“And DOJ’s assertion that it has ‘virtually unreviewable’ license to dismiss charges on this basis is disturbing in its breadth, implying that public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities. That suggestion is fundamentally incompatible with the basic promise of equal justice under law.”

Less than a month after Trump took office, Emil Bove — Trump’s former criminal defense attorney turned top Justice Department official — on Feb. 14 asked Ho to dismiss the case without prejudice, which would have meant federal authorities could bring it again. Mayor Adams asked him to get rid of it permanently, and former federal judges and prosecutors urged him to scrutinize the terms behind the dismissal deal offered to Adams closely and consider appointing a special prosecutor.

The ruling is in line with the findings of an independent lawyer, Paul Clement, Ho appointed to advise him on the matter. The former solicitor general under President George W. Bush recommended he dismiss the case for good. Clement said the prospect of the mayor feeling indebted to the president out of fear he could be reindicted and not New Yorkers was “deeply troubling.”

“[After] DOJ decided to seek dismissal of his case, the Mayor took at least one new immigration-related action consistent with the preferences of the new administration. Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Ho wrote.

Mayor Adams declined to address his case as he left an event at the Met Wednesday. His lawyer, Alex Spiro, said, “The case against Eric Adams should have never been brought in the first place—and finally today that case is gone forever. From Day 1, the mayor has maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorkers has prevailed.”

Ho noted throughout his decision that it was not based on the case’s merits. And he entirely rejected parts of the DOJ and the mayor’s claims that the prosecutors who were trying the case before the Trump administration intervened had political motivations.

“[The] Southern District of New York prosecutors who worked on this case followed all appropriate Justice Department guidelines. There is no evidence—zero—that they had any improper motives,” the judge wrote.

The mayor has faced searing condemnation for agreeing to the terms laid out by the Trump administration and saw calls for his removal amid concerns he was sacrificing New York City’s immigrant communities to save his own skin.

Those criticisms reached a fever pitch when Adams appeared on “Fox & Friends” with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, who said he’d be “up [the mayor’s] butt” if he didn’t play ball with the Trump administration as it sought to carry out deportations.

Bove filed the dismissal bid after the interim head of the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, Danielle Sassoon — a veteran prosecutor and registered Republican whom Trump had installed in the senior role on his first full day in office — quit rather than obey the order to wind down the case, in which Adams faced up to 45 years in prison if convicted.

Sassoon wrote to Trump’s new Attorney General Pam Bondi before resigning, saying she had been preparing to sign off on more charges accusing the mayor of attempting to conceal his crimes from the FBI and ordering others to do the same. She said the proposed arrangement amounted to a “quid pro quo” between Adams and the Trump administration, “indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”

The prosecutor was one of at least eight Justice Department staffers to resign over the controversy, including one of the lead prosecutors handling the case, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten.

In his resignation letter, Scotten, a U.S. Army vet who clerked for conservative Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, told Bove he’d have to find another “fool” to ask the court to throw out the case.

“[Any] assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” Scotten wrote.

“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”

After the Justice Department filed its dismissal motion, Adams filed his own, asking Ho to get rid of the case for good. He claimed the widely reported letters by Sassoon and Scotten had destroyed whatever presumption of innocence he had left.

The indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in September accused Adams of bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, and two counts of soliciting contributions from foreign nationals for allegedly putting a price on his political influence starting more than a decade ago when he was Brooklyn borough president.

The case alleged that Adams accepted luxury travel and hotel stays worldwide from wealthy Turkish officials and businessmen and solicited illicit campaign donations from his foreign benefactors, which were funneled through U.S. citizens and maximized through the city’s public matching funds program.

Prosecutors secured a guilty plea from Brooklyn real estate magnate Erden Arkan in January, who was expected to testify at the trial, in which he admitted organizing illegal donations for Adams in spring 2021 on the orders of the then-mayoral candidate. A former senior aide to the mayor, Mohamed Bahi, had also agreed to plead guilty to related charges before Trump’s Justice Department intervened.

The feds said trial evidence would have proven how Adams partly repaid the bribes by forcing former FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro to disregard safety concerns by prematurely opening a skyscraper in Midtown housing Turkey’s consulate in time for a visit by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.