The federal judge in Mayor Eric Adams‘ corruption case scheduled a Feb. 19 hearing in which President Trump’s Justice Department must explain its reasons for moving to drop the charges against Hizzoner last week.
Federal District Judge Dale Ho, in a Tuesday filing, ordered that DOJ officials, Adams, and his legal team attend the hearing, set for 2 p.m. on Wednesday at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. He also ordered that Adams provide his written consent to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the charges by 5 p.m. Tuesday.
During the hearing, top DOJ officials will explain their reasoning for dismissing the case to Ho, after which he will determine whether or not to grant it.
“The government’s determination to abandon a prosecution is ‘entitled to great weight’ and to a ‘presumption [of] good faith[,] . . . but it is not conclusive upon the Court,'” Ho wrote in his filing. “The parties shall be prepared to address, inter alia, the reasons for the Government’s motion, the scope and effect of Mayor Adams’s ‘consent[] in writing,’ ECF No. 122 at 1, and the procedure for resolution of the motion.”
If Ho declines to dismiss the case, the DOJ presumably would appeal that decision.
The DOJ’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, said in a memo last week that its decision to drop Adams’ charges is not based on the facts of the case or the legal theories underlying it.
Instead, Bove argued the case should be dropped because former US Attorney Damian Williams brought it for political reasons, came too close to the 2025 mayor’s race, and distracted Adams from cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
DOJ asked for the case to be dropped without prejudice, giving it the ability to resurrect the charges at any time.
Bove’s memo, which Adams immediately claimed as vindication, set off a series of resignations at the Justice Department involving prosecutors who refused to scuttle the case. Chief among them was acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who wrote a scathing letter to Bove in which she accused the mayor’s legal team of exchanging his cooperation with Trump’s mass deportation agenda for dropping the charges against him.
Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, has fiercely denied Sassoon’s allegations.
Nevertheless, many of New York’s elected leaders fear that Adams is now “compromised” because he is completely beholden to Trump. That anxiety has led to a fresh round of calls for him to either resign or for Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove him from office. It also spurred four Adams’ deputy mayors to submit their resignations on Monday.
Hochul is meeting with several top city elected officials, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and City Comptroller Brad Lander, to discuss Adams’ future in City Hall on Tuesday. The possibility of Hochul moving to oust Adams from office herself or urging city leaders to convene the Committee on Mayoral Inability, which could also remove the mayor, is on the table.
Adams, for his part, has continued to insist that he did nothing wrong and that he is “going nowhere.”
The mayor was indicted in September on federal charges, including bribery and wire fraud. He is accused of receiving luxury travel perks and illegal foreign campaign donations in exchange for favors to the Turkish government.
