Rotten Big Apple? Prosecutorial pile-on? Politics as blood sport? To legal observers in New York City, those were the questions haunting the pending criminal trial of Mayor Eric Adams.
The Trump Justice Department ended speculation last week with a bombshell memo to the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the fabled and famously independent SDNY, directing the office to “dismiss the pending charges” against Adams.
The memo from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove criticized “the timing of the charges and more recent public actions by the former U.S. Attorney [Damian Williams] … that have threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity that risks impacting potential witnesses and the jury pool.”
The Bove memo also noted that “the pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.”
At the SDNY, the interim U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, declined to follow Bove’s directive and resigned. So did the lead prosecutor in the case. In Washington, five members of the Justice Department’s public integrity unit, responsible for overseeing corruption cases, resigned. Bove responded to Sassoon’s resignation with a scathing letter charging her with “insubordination” and misconduct. Attorney General Pam Bondi brushed aside the resignations, and on Friday, the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the charges.
Adams was at the center of a highly public, highly damaging federal criminal investigation. In November 2023, the FBI raided the homes of top Adams aides, seizing iPhones, computers, and documents. Weeks later, agents stopped the mayor himself as he was leaving an event at New York University, separated him from his security detail, and demanded that he turn over his cellphones and an iPad. The news spread quickly: A criminal case against Adams was escalating. A former police officer and former Republican, Adams narrowly won the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary with a tough-on-crime message. Constant battles with the powerful progressive wing of his party followed.
Less than a year after the FBI raids, an earthquake of high-level resignations rocked City Hall. Gone were First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, Police Commissioner Edward Caban, Schools Chancellor David Banks, Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Philip Banks, chief counsel Lisa Zornbergm, Director of Asian Affairs Winnie Greco, and influential aides Tim Pearson, Rana Abbasova, and Mohamed Bahi.
Two deputy mayors! The police commissioner! The schools chancellor! On the face of it, the FBI raids and resignations suggested a vast conspiracy of wrongdoing. Breathless media accounts noted at least four federal investigations: for corruption, shakedowns, illegal solicitation of donations, and straw donor schemes. Adams’s political enemies on the Left, eyeing the 2025 Democratic primary that decides who becomes mayor in deep blue New York, smelled blood in the water. A parade of progressive politicians, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), called on Adams to resign “for the good of the city.”
But when Adams was finally indicted in the SDNY in September 2024, the case was underwhelming. Gone was any suggestion of a network of corruption involving the police commissioner, the schools chancellor, the deputy mayors, and others. Adams was charged in a five-count indictment with seeking and accepting “improper valuable benefits” from wealthy foreigners “for nearly a decade.”
Specifically, Adams was accused of accepting illegal straw donor campaign contributions, leveraging them against New York City’s matching funds program, and receiving gifts from Turkish government entities of free or discounted airline travel, hotel rooms, meals, and entertainment. In exchange for the Turkish government’s largesse, prosecutors allege, Adams engaged in a quid pro quo waiver of a fire inspection requirement on a new Turkish consular building in Manhattan to allow it to open in time for a high-profile visit by Turkey’s president.
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Campaign finance violations are a serious matter, but the charges against Adams appeared weak and unlikely to sway a Manhattan jury. Upgraded tickets and complimentary meals and entertainment are unseemly in a public servant, but hardly the stuff of La Cosa Nostra. Adams could plausibly argue ignorance of the activities of his aides in the straw donor scheming. And the Supreme Court’s narrowing of the scope of public corruption in the McDonnell v. United States ruling would make it hard for prosecutors to argue that Adams engaged in an “official action” to grease the skids for a presidential visit to the new Turkish Consulate: In September 2021, the time of the presidential visit, Adams was not even mayor — he had won the mayoral primary but was still the borough president of Brooklyn.
While the case for the defense looked promising, the calendar was brutal. Adams was slated to go on trial in April. The Democratic mayoral primary is in June. But as his troubles mounted last year, Adams found a sympathetic ear in the Republican presidential candidate. “I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders,” Trump said at the high-profile Al Smith Dinner for Catholic charity in October 2024, addressing Adams. “We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you.”
Micah Morrison is the chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch.
Behind the bombshell end of the criminal case against Eric Adams
