Judge in NYC Mayor Eric Adams' corruption case sets hearing on proposed dismissal of charges

The Manhattan federal court judge overseeing the political corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has ordered a hearing for Wednesday to determine whether the U.S. Department of Justice is justified in dropping the case.

District Court Judge Dale Ho scheduled a court appearance at 2 p.m. so that he is "satisfied that the reasons advanced for the proposed dismissal are substantial," he said, quoting case law, regarding the purpose of the hearing.

On Friday, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove and Edward Sullivan, senior litigation counsel in the Washington, D.C.-based public integrity unit, filed a motion to dismiss the five-count indictment against the mayor.

In September, Adams pleaded not guilty to charges he solicited election donations from foreign nationals, a violation of federal law, then laundered the money through straw donors to fraudulently qualify for millions of dollars of matching funds through the city's campaign finance system. The mayor was also alleged to have traded luxury accommodations and first-class travel upgrades for municipal favors.

In their motion last week, the government lawyers said the case should be dropped because it interferes with Adams’ ability to govern the city, creating "unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies."

Bove had previously charged the head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Damian Williams, had brought the case to further his political ambitions. Bove said he had not reviewed the merits of the case and reserved the option to bring the same charges again at a future date.

The mayor's lawyer, Alex Spiro, submitted a letter on Tuesday at the judge's request agreeing to the conditions of the prosecution's dismissal.

Adams’ case was transferred to Washington, D.C., after the interim Manhattan U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, resigned rather than carry out the justice department's directive to dismiss the case without prejudice. Half a dozen prosecutors and Department of Justice officials also resigned rather than carry out Bove’s order.

In her resignation letter, Sassoon said she believed the mayor to be guilty of the crimes and the office had prepared to bring additional charges for witness tampering and destruction of evidence in the case.

Over the weekend, the organizations Common Cause and Free + Fair Litigation Group, comprising former federal prosecutors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and a former Manhattan federal judge, asked the judge, a former American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, to hold an inquiry into the U.S. attorney general’s rationale, charging it was the D.C. headquarters that had politicized the case.

The two sides are not far apart in how they portray the circumstances surrounding the dismissal.

According to Sassoon, her office met with top Justice Department officials, Adams and his lawyers in Washington on Jan. 31 to discuss the matter.

"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," she wrote in her resignation letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Spiro, on the other hand, said he was laying out the facts of the case during the meeting. 

"We never offered anything to the Department, or anyone else, for the dismissal," the defense attorney said in a letter filed Tuesday with the court. "And neither the Department, nor anyone else, ever asked anything of us for the dismissal. We told the Department that ending the case would lift a legal and practical burden that impeded Mayor Adams in his official duties."

Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor who wrote the friend of the court brief for Common Cause, urged the judge to deny the motion to dismiss and call Bove to New York to "explain his position." He also called on the court to issue sanctions against the Justice Department and Bove for "making improper and unethical demands on prosecutors in New York and Washington."

The legal community is split over what avenues and authority the judge has to refuse the Department of Justice's request to drop the case.

The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure also appear to give both prosecutors and judges power over whether a case should be dismissed.

Rule 48a says  the Department of Justice should be the "absolute judge" to bring a criminal case and is "the best judge of whether a pending prosecution should be terminated."

However, the rule goes on to say that judges should not interfere in the decision to close a case "unless clearly contrary to manifest public interest."

"There's a disagreement in the legal community about the scope of Rule 48," Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and professor at New York Law School.

Some see the rule as a way to protect the accused from prosecutors, she said, so that the terms of the dismissal are fair.

"There's a different camp that holds that Rule 48 was really adopted for a different reason, and that is to prevent against abuses of prosecutorial power on behalf of powerful individuals," Roiphe said. "That would obviously give more leeway here, the idea that somehow because Eric Adams is in a position of power, he was able to manipulate prosecutors into doing what he wanted them to do."