Less than one month into office, the Trump DOJ has rolled out sweeping new innovations in corruption.
In moving to dismiss the case against Mayor Eric Adams as part of an elaborate ploy to gain leverage over the five boroughs, Trump’s acting Deputy Attorney General and former defense attorney Emil Bove has managed to corrupt several key DOJ offices. His actions, if successful, would give the White House a means to control the New York City Mayor’s Office, a development that seemingly bypasses the American concept of federalism. Significantly, it’s all prompted several longtime DOJ attorneys who regard the alleged quid-pro-quo with disgust to leave the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and Main Justice.
But this episode isn’t finished. U.S. District Judge Dale Ho will have to sign off on the effort to dismiss the case, and will hold a hearing on last week’s developments in New York later on Wednesday. He doesn’t have to rubber-stamp the deal: he has some powers to examine the case, though the specifics of how that would work bring us into relatively uncharted legal territory. It’s unclear if he could go further in ordering the DOJ — or an independent attorney — to continue the prosecution.
Here are five points on how we got here, and what we’ll be watching during the hearing.
No evidence, only politics
In the weeks after Trump won the election, Adams signaled that he wanted a pardon. He traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump days before the inauguration. Soon after Trump took office, Adams attorney Alex Spiro reportedly petitioned White House Counsel David Warrington for a pardon.
For the next week or so, Adams disappeared from public view. He cited an ailment, but the details of where exactly he was shifted. Then, on Feb. 10, things started to move.
On that day, two things happened: Adams reportedly told top city officials not to criticize Trump and to not interfere with federal immigration enforcement.
That same day, Bove directed Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop the prosecution, saying explicitly that he wasn’t doing so based on the evidence gathered in the case.
Pretext upon pretext
Bove layered the justification for ending the case with several pretexts, each one of which added a new level of corruption.
First off, Bove made a bizarre accusation that former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams had politicized the case to further his own career, and as part of an elaborate bargain involving a potential Kamala Harris victory. As evidence, he cited the fact that there were news stories about the Adams prosecution posted on the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s website.
Williams didn’t bite at TPM’s request for comment.
That’s one pretext. The second one that Bove offered was more revealing.
Bove said that the corruption case had “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.” In short: prosecuting Adams supposedly makes him unable to comply with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
There are multiple ironies here. One is that Bove does two things in the letter: he says explicitly that the Trump DOJ will review Adams’ immigration crackdown efforts after the November 2025 mayoral election. The other is that Bove says explicitly in a footnote that this is not a quid pro quo.
Of course, it certainly appears to be, and Danielle Sassoon, who was until last week the acting head of SDNY, described the deal as explicitly that: in a Feb. 12 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, she alleged that Adams’ attorneys, Alex Spiro and Bill Burck, had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo” at a meeting with prosecutors. It’s a bargain in which Adams agrees to effectively undo New York City’s sanctuary city policies in exchange for the personal benefit of avoiding further prosecution. Trump, in theory, gets to preserve leverage over Adams that he would lose were he to grant the mayor a pardon.
Bove’s effort to foist this deal on the DOJ prompted several resignations at the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Sassoon, and in the Public Integrity unit.
Judge Ho and the case
However, the deal has not yet fully gone through.
In order for the case to be formally dismissed, Judge Ho must approve the DOJ’s motion to dismiss. After multiple resignations at Main Justice, career prosecutor Ed Sullivan agreed to sign on to the motion, along with Bove and another DOJ attorney, Toni Bacon.
The issue for Ho is that the deal to end the case could be construed as inviting him to approve a corrupt bargain. In her letter to Bondi, Sassoon cited case law to argue that if a motion to dismiss were filed as part of a bribery scheme in which a prosecutor is implicated, then it “should not be granted as contrary to the public interest”
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment. Nor will a court likely find that such an improper exchange is consistent with the public interest,” she wrote.
Still, Ho has relatively few options.
The Michael Flynn option
A somewhat analogous situation unfolded in 2020.
Then-President Donald Trump had his DOJ move to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn, who had been, briefly, his National Security Adviser and who had been indicted on a false statements charge.
The case had been a centerpiece of the Trump-Russia scandal, and came after Flynn had first entered a guilty plea, and then withdrew it. The DOJ subsequently moved to withdraw the case in what then seemed to be an example of rank corruption, but now is a Tuesday.
Judge Emmet Sullivan for the District of Columbia refused to approve the dismissal. Instead, he appointed an attorney to act as an amicus: because both Flynn and the DOJ were in agreement, this attorney argued that the case should continue.
Days later, Flynn sought an immediate appeal, keeping the case on hold until the D.C. Circuit sent it back to Sullivan a few months later. The case then stayed in a weird limbo until Trump pardoned Flynn after the 2020 election.
Ho has more to think about than just a corrupt NYC mayor
Ho said in a Tuesday order that he would hear arguments over the reasons for the government’s motion, and “the procedure for resolution of the motion” at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
There are other routes that the allegations against Adams might take. The Manhattan DA’s Office could pick up the case (DA Alvin Bragg didn’t return TPM’s request for comment). Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has said that she is reviewing whether to invoke a state law that allows her to remove Adams as mayor.
But the core of the issue goes to Trump trying to use the case to corrupt both the DOJ and Constitutional limits on his own power. In this case, it’s in the form of a bargain to place New York City under the control of a politician beholden to the federal government. Where might it go next?
As far as I know, Judge Ho is an actual arbiter of justice. I eagerly await his decision.
Conspicuously missing from the documentation is a signed statement from Adams that he agrees with this. It’s a requirement.
He got his Roy Cohn in this dead eyed bottom feeder.
And if he takes the easy way out? What then? When do we put a stop to Diaper Don’s crime spree?