Mayor Eric Adams took a last-minute trip to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Trump on Friday to discuss “infrastructure” and “other funding items,” his office announced.
Adams met with Trump in the White House late Friday afternoon, a confab his team only updated to his public schedule on Firday morning. In a May 9 evening social media video following the meeting, Adams said they dicsussed the Empire Wind One project, which Trump halted contruction on last month, along with “investments in our city.”
“Many people hear me, talking about the manufacturing industry, what we can do there,” Adams said. “Some of the good ideas like developing our own [computer] chips and others. At the heart of this was to establish real communication, that’s our goal.”
However, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office afterward that they discussed “almost nothing.”
“He came in to say ‘hello,’ it was very nice,” Trump said. “I think he came in to thank me frankly. I think that would be I would say the primary reason.”
Trump appeared to be referring to his DOJ moving to drop Adams’ federal corruption case in February. Federal District Judge Dale Ho granted the dismissal request in early April.
Adams has committed not to criticize Trump in public and has stayed mostly silent on many of the president’s controversial actions affecting the city, such as his bid to kill congestion pricing or his threats to cut billions of dollars in federal funding.
Mayoral spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said Adams was accompanied by Deputy Mayor for Intergovernmental Affairs Tiffany Raspberry. She did not answer whether Adams planned to dicsuss with Trump the unsealing of documents in his dismissed corruption case or immigration enforcement, an area where he has openly committed to work with the president.
The DOJ is publicly release documents in Adams’ case Friday after Ho ordered it to do so last month. Ho granted the department a one week extension to May 9 at 5 p.m. after it missed his first deadline on May 2.
The documents set to be unsealed include a search warrant for Adams’ cellphones, which federal agents seized in late 2023, according to published reports.
When Ho issued his ruling dismissing Adams’ case he appeared to agree with allegations that Adams’ attorney made a “bargain” with the Trump DOJ, offering his cooperation with the president’s immigration agenda in exchange for dropping his charges.
Adams, his attorney, and DOJ officials have repeatedly denied any such deal was made. But he met with Trump’s so-called “border czar” Tom Homan directly after the DOJ moved to dismiss his case, with Homan saying he would be “up [Adams’] butt” if the mayor did not advance Trump’s immigration crack down in the city.
Adams has faced fierce backlash over his recent moves surrounding immigration enforcement in the five boroughs, including his First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro signing an executive order to let federal immigration agents onto Rikers Island for the first time in a decade. The City Council sued to block the move last month, arguing it violates the city’s sanctuary laws and was the product of a “corrupt bargain” between his attorney and Trump’s DOJ.
A state judge granted a temporary restraining order until a May 29 hearing.
The mayor has maintained he is not violating the city’s sanctuary laws because he is only working with the Trump administration on criminal investigations and not deporations, which are civil matters.
