Judge Dismisses Case Against NYC Mayor Eric Adams But Makes Sure Trump’s DOJ Will Have To Live With It
Some days, you just have to take the small victories. As the Trump Administration continues to barrage the nation with every terrible thing it can think of doing, it’s clear there’s no level of reprisal capable of keeping pace.
This is one of the small victories, even if it — at first glance — it appears to be a win for the Trump Administration. The indictment against NYC Mayor Eric Adams — stemming from a corruption case that managed to ensnare pretty much all of his closest government confidants — has been dismissed by Judge Dale Ho.
This dismissal event was highly controversial. Once Trump took office, he directed the DOJ to dismiss the case against the mayor. This immediately prompted the resignation of the DOJ prosecutors who had brought the criminal charges. Trump’s preferred DOJ officials publicly pilloried the prosecutors that chose to walk, rather than undermine their ethics. Then Trump’s careerist prosecutors took over, raising a litany of bad faith arguments as to why Eric Adams should be allowed to walk.
Trump wanted Adams to walk, but only while being manipulated by puppet strings. Trump wanted to ensure the mayor would go all in on his anti-immigrant efforts and figured being given a free pass on criminal charges might purchase enough loyalty to get him through the next four years.
So, it might seem that dismissing the charges with prejudice would just be another example of a court failing to act as a check on executive power. But Judge Dale Ho’s dismissal [PDF] makes it clear he’s unhappy with Trump’s DOJ. More than that, this dismissal ensures Adams can’t be prosecuted for these charges, even if the mayor decides he’s not going to be Trump’s puppet.
Trump’s DOJ wants to have both the carrot and the stick. Judge Ho says the court will allow the carrot, but will be confiscating the stick. Here’s how that’s explained in the opening of Ho’s comprehensive, 78-page dismissal:
A critical feature of DOJ’s Motion is that it seeks dismissal without prejudice—that is, DOJ seeks to abandon its prosecution of Mayor Adams at this time, while reserving the right to reinitiate the case in the future. DOJ does not seek to end this case once and for all. Rather, its request, if granted, would leave Mayor Adams under the specter of reindictment at essentially any time, and for essentially any reason.
The Court declines, in its limited discretion under Rule 48(a), to endorse that outcome. Instead, it dismisses this case with prejudice—meaning that the Government may not bring the charges in the Indictment against Mayor Adams in the future. In light of DOJ’s rationales, dismissing the case without prejudice would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents. That appearance is inevitable, and it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice.
Now, the DOJ is stuck with its politically opportunistic dismissal. If Mayor Adams decides to push back against Trump (however unlikely that is), he has nothing to fear from Trump’s DOJ. At best, they’d have to start over from scratch and find some other set of criminal charges to levy against Adams for his disobedience.
It’s a win, however unsatisfying it is to see a clearly corrupt politician go right back to the job that was at the center of all the corruption. But the DOJ under Trump is just as corrupt. And now it has to live with the results of political lawfare, however inconvenient that might become in the future.
The whole decision is worth reading for its evisceration of the DOJ’s tactics under Trump — something that not only covers its actions in this case, but its seemingly illegal anti-immigration enforcement efforts. Mayor Adams doesn’t come out looking much better by comparison.
As for the immigration enforcement rationale, to the extent that DOJ suggests that Mayor Adams is unable to assist with immigration enforcement while this case is ongoing, such an assertion is similarly unsubstantiated. Indeed, shortly after DOJ made the decision to seek dismissal of the case—and while the Indictment was still pending—the Mayor announced that he would permit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate at the Rikers Island Jail Complex, an act that appears to be contrary to New York City law. In other words, the record does not show that this case has impaired Mayor Adams in his immigration enforcement efforts. Instead, it shows that 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.
Back to Trump’s DOJ:
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. 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.
On top of that, there’s no way a court can deny a prosecutorial motion to dismiss a case, outside of extreme cases of criminal contempt by the prosecution. It was always going to end this way. The only remaining discussion was how the judge was going to handle everything he had witnessed over the course of this prosecution, including the Trump DOJ’s sudden interest in setting Eric Adams free. Judge Ho says none of this looks good, but the court can’t simply force the DOJ to carry out a prosecution it’s not willing to undertake on its own.
But, however underwhelming it might feel at the moment, this is the best case scenario. The DOJ wanted Adams sprung. And now he is. For good. Even if he decides he’s not going to return the favor by being Trump’s NYC-based immigration enforcement lackey for the next few years. This forces the DOJ to play by its own twisted rules and denies an extremely vindictive president any leverage he might have had to ensure future cooperation from the disgraced mayor.