New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks with members of the media as he arrives for an Adult Town Hall at Sunnyside Community Services Older Adult Center on Feb. 12, 2025 in the Queens borough of New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
A federal judge ordered embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams, his attorneys, and Department of Justice prosecutors to appear in court Wednesday afternoon to explain the DOJ’s controversial request to dismiss criminal corruption charges against Adams.
Manhattan U.S. District Judge Dale Ho’s order Tuesday suggests that he will not rubber stamp the highly unusual dismissal request, which has sparked concerns that the DOJ struck a deal with Adams to toss the case in exchange for the Democratic mayor’s cooperation with President Donald Trump’s immigration orders.
Seven top DOJ prosecutors — including ones directly involved in Adams’ case — last week resigned in protest of the department’s bid to toss out the case.
Ho’s order quotes an appeals court case that says judges “should be satisfied that the reasons for the proposed dismissal are substantial.”
“The parties shall be prepared to address, [among other things], the reasons for the Government’s motion, the scope and effect of Mayor Adams’s ‘consent in writing,'” Ho wrote.
The order was issued a day after three former U.S. Attorneys for Manhattan, New Jersey, and Connecticut asked him to “conduct a factual inquiry” into the dismissal request, citing “these extraordinary events” last week.
Those events “raise serious questions about the appropriateness of the government’s dismissal request,” the letter said.
In another letter Monday, former Manhattan federal prosecutor Nathaniel Akerman, who is now an attorney for the advocacy group Common Cause, urged Ho to deny the motion to dismiss, saying it was motivated by a “corrupt quid pro quo” between Adams and the DOJ.
“The Court may also consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the prosecution of Mr. Adams in this Court,” Akerman wrote.
Meanwhile Tuesday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is set to meet with people she has called “key leaders” to discuss “a path forward” for New York City after four of Adams’ deputy mayors resigned on the heels of the DOJ dismissal request.
Hochul’s announcement of that meeting suggested that she is strongly considering exercising her constitutional authority to remove the mayor from office.
Top DOJ lawyers on Friday asked Ho to toss the case after the acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney and six other prosecutors resigned rather than comply with an order to file that request.
Danielle Sassoon, the former acting U.S. Attorney, told U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in a letter that the DOJ’s dismissal request — which preserves the right to refile charges against Adams instead of dismissing the case “with prejudice” — creates “obvious ethical problems.”
She said Adams is being implicitly threatened with future prosecution if he does not comply with Trump’s demand that Adams and other local officials cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws.
The DOJ filed its dismissal motion a day after White House border czar Tom Homan met with Adams, who agreed to give federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents access to the city’s massive jail complex on Rikers Island.
That motion, which deputy Attorney General Emil Bove signed, says Bove concluded that continuing to prosecute Adams would “interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
The court filing also said Bove concluded the dismissal was necessary “because of the appearances of impropriety and risks of interference” with New York’s primary and mayoral elections this year.
Adams, who is charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, had been scheduled to go on trial in late April — less than six months before November’s mayoral election.
Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro, in a letter to Ho filed Tuesday, disputed the contention by Sassoon and other prosecutors that the DOJ agreed to a quid pro quo with Adams to obtain his compliance on immigration enforcement in exchange for dismissing the case.
“There was no quid pro quo,” Spiro wrote. “Period.”
“We never offered anything to the Department, or anyone else, for the dismissal. And neither the Department, nor anyone else, ever asked anything of us for the dismissal,” Spiro said. “We told the Department that ending the case would lift a legal and practical burden that impeded Mayor Adams in his official duties.”
Homan during a joint televised interview with Adams on Fox News on Friday said that if the mayor “doesn’t come through” on an agreement to cooperate with ICE officials in immigration policies “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?'” Homan said.
Ho, in his order setting Wednesday’s hearing, noted that federal criminal procedure rules allow prosecutors to dismiss a criminal case “with leave of court.”
Ho also noted that a 2022 federal appeals court ruling says the executive branch of government “remains the absolute judge of whether a prosecution should be initiated and presumptively the best judge of whether a pending prosecution should be terminated.”
But the same appellate ruling suggests that a dismissal request can be blocked if it is “clearly contrary to manifest public interest.”
The judge ordered Adams’ lawyers by 5 p.m. Tuesday to file the mayor’s written consent to the dismissal request by the DOJ.
Spiro soon after filed that document.
Hochul, in a statement Monday announcing her meeting with political leaders about Adams’ future, said, “In the 235 years of New York State history, these powers have never been utilized to remove a duly-elected mayor; overturning the will of the voters is a serious step that should not be taken lightly.”
“That said, the alleged conduct at City Hall that has been reported over the past two weeks is troubling and cannot be ignored,” Hochul said.
