Judge in NYC Mayor Eric Adams' bribery case adjourns mayor's April trial, appoints special legal adviser to review case

The Manhattan federal judge presiding over New York City Mayor Eric Adams' public corruption case delayed his upcoming trial and appointed a veteran attorney as a special legal adviser on Friday to review the Department of Justice's effort to drop the case.

The move comes in response to a controversial request by the U.S. Department of Justice to unburden the mayor of the criminal indictment against him so that he could help carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.

U.S. District Court Judge Dale Ho adjourned Adams' scheduled April trial without setting a new date but kept the pending charges against the mayor intact, a move that essentially pauses the legal case against Adams for the next three weeks.

"Accordingly, to assist with its decision-making via an adversarial process, the Court exercises its inherent authority to appoint Paul Clement of Clement & Murphy PLLC as amicus curiae to present arguments on the Government’s Motion to Dismiss," Ho wrote in his decision, calling the move a way to "advance the public interest in truth and fairness."

Clement, a Republican, served as solicitor general under former President George W. Bush.

Ho directed the parties to submit legal briefs by March 7 and set oral arguments for March 14.

Adams' defense attorney Alex Spiro, in a Friday letter to the judge, cited recent comments by Attorney General Pam Bondi calling the case against Adams "incredibly weak," in calling for the judge to follow the Department of Justice directive.

"Every day prosecutors exercise their judgment when determining what cases to bring," Spiro wrote. "In this case, there was a lapse in that judgment. The Department of Justice has realized its error and now seeks to correct the prior Administration’s mistake. There is nothing unusual or suspect about setting right what was wrong. That is what justice does."

The Department of Justice did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Speaking to Fox 5 News early Friday afternoon, Adams said that his legal team is reviewing the judge’s ruling. "Justice delayed is not justice denied," Adams said.

The decision came two days after Ho, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney, held a hearing to clarify the terms of the dismissal and to verify that Adams entered into the agreement without additional promises or threats.

 Legal scholars, former prosecutors and a judge called on Ho to conduct a "searching inquiry" into allegations that a backroom agreement had been struck to drop the prosecution in exchange for allowing federal immigration enforcement in New York, a dramatic reversal from the city’s standing as a "sanctuary city" for foreign migrants. 

Ho said that he had limited authority to deny the Justice Department’s request to end the case.
"I want to make sure that I consider everything appropriate, and that I don't consider anything inappropriate," he said at the hearing. "And make a reasoned decision that is mindful of my role, which I understand here is quite narrow."

A Manhattan federal grand jury indicted the mayor in September on charges he solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from Turkish business people and a foreign public official.

Prosecutors alleged that Adams sought and received more than $100,000 in luxury hotel stays and first-class airplane upgrades.

In return, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office said, Adams, who was then still the Brooklyn Borough President, prodded the New York City Fire Department commissioner to clear the newly constructed 35-story Turkish consulate to open despite safety concerns from fire safety inspectors.

Additionally, the mayor allegedly hid election donations from foreign-born donors through straw donors in order to qualify for millions of dollars in matching funds through the city’s campaign finance system.

The mayor pleaded not guilty in September. Spiro has not disputed the facts of the case, but defended the high-priced gifts as gratuities, not bribes.

The case threw Adams’ reelection campaign into turmoil amid a growing call for him to step down. He faces a crowded Democratic primary in June.

Trump has expressed solidarity with Adams over the mayor’s complaints to the Biden administration about the large influx of migrants into the city. The issue became a point of contention between the mayor and the former president. Adams went as far as to suggest that he was being prosecuted because of his criticism of Biden’s border policy.

Last, October at the annual Al Smith Dinner, a high-profile political event in the city, Trump offered that he and Adams had both been unfairly targeted by the Department of Justice.

"I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders," Trump said at the event. "We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric."

The president also publicly mused about granting Adams a pardon.

On Feb. 10, however, Trump’s former defense attorney, Emil Bove, now the acting deputy attorney general, the second in command at the Justice Department, ordered the interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to drop the case to free the mayor to carry out the president’s border policy.

In his directive, Bove said that he had not reviewed the case on its merits and offered that local prosecutors could take up the case again in the future.

In a letter to Bondi, Sassoon refused to carry out Bove’s order, she said because she believed the mayor had committed the crimes charged and intended to update the indictment with additional charges.

She also detailed a Jan. 31, 2024, meeting at Justice Department Headquarters in which top officials negotiated an agreement to drop the charges in exchange for Adams’ agreement to carry out Trump’s immigration policies in New York, a "sanctuary city" that had previously resisted federal deportation efforts.

"Adams's attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed," Sassoon said in her letter.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Adams and his lawyer denied that there was any such deal.

Bove, showing some impatience with the judge’s inquiry, also rebutted Sassoon’s allegations that there was a deal.

"You have a record undisputed that there is no quid pro quo," Bove told the court.

 Public statements in the press by Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan, a former upstate New York police officer, seem to contradict that.

Homan and Adams met ahead of the announcement that the mayor would allow immigration enforcement on Rikers Island.

"If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch, I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is this agreement we came to?' " Homan said during a morning talk show appearance with the mayor on "Fox and Friends."

Adams downplayed the statement as a joke between two former police officers and said that Homan had privately apologized for saying it. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has the power as governor to remove Adams from office, on Thursday proposed strict oversight of city operations under Adams but declined to use her constitutional power at this time to remove him after an uproar over what some called an apparent quid pro quo between Adams and the Trump administration.

Hochul said her proposed "guardrails," which must be approved by City Council and the State Legislature, would be in place through this year, but could be extended.

Hochul wouldn’t comment Friday on the judge’s decision nor how it might impact the proposal she made Thursday to restrict Adams’ authority. She proposed added state oversight of Adams’ actions and to empower additional elected city officials to sue the Trump administration over policies that they see as harming the city.

Hochul spokesman Avi Small on Friday referred reporters to the governor’s comments on Thursday in announcing her proposal, which didn’t address how the judge’s decision could impact the governor’s plan.

Spokesmen from Democratic legislative leaders also had no comment Friday on the judge’s decision. Legislators are reviewing Hochul’s proposal from her public comments Thursday because the initiative isn’t yet detailed in legislative bills, the spokesmen said.

 The legal tangle has echoes of the criminal case against former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in the first Trump administration. The Justice Department filed a motion to drop the perjury case against the former national security adviser, claiming it was unsubstantiated. Instead of dismissing the charge, D.C. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed former Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson to review the case not as a prosecutor but as an impartial third-party.

In an 82-page brief, Gleeson excoriated the Justice Department for dropping the case, calling it "a gross abuse of prosecutorial power."

Flynn’s team challenged the court’s authority to appoint Gleeson, but before the issue could be resolved, Trump pardoned the general. 

With Michael Gormley and Matthew Chayes