A court ruled against the Trump administration by dismissing the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams with prejudice on Wednesday. This means that the Department of Justice cannot bring those charges back at any point in the future.
The decision by Judge Dale Ho rejected the Justice Department’s request to dismiss the case against Adams without prejudice. This would have allowed them to hang those charges over the mayor’s head in order to pressure him to do the administration’s bidding on immigration policies.
“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,” Ho wrote.
Adams was charged with multiple felony corruption charges in 2024, but the Trump administration quickly moved to dismiss the case by arguing, without evidence, that the prosecution was somehow tainted and that the mayor needed to be free from criminal indictment in order to enact the administration’s deportation agenda.
Ho firmly rejected these rationales as “unsupported by any objective evidence.”
“There is no evidence ― zero ― that [prosecutors] had any improper motives. … All of this suggests that the “appearances of impropriety” rationale is not just thin, but pretextual,” Ho wrote.
While some had asked the court to deny DOJ’s motion to dismiss the charges altogether, Ho wrote that the court had no ability to force DOJ to prosecute someone nor was there any reason to believe it could appoint an independent prosecutor to take the case.
Denying dismissal would also not “protect the rights of the defendant” since “the Government may be seeking to extract policy concessions from the Mayor” and denial would keep the charges hanging over Adams’ head.
Still, Ho lit into the administration’s immigration rationale as both false and tantamount to blackmail.
“DOJ’s immigration enforcement rationale is both unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep,” Ho wrote. “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.”
The dismissal of Adams’ case was the first major scandal to hit the Justice Department during President Donald Trump’s second term. DOJ’s decision to seek dismissal led to multiple resignations of high-level officials, including the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Resigning officials, all of whom were Republicans, issued scathing letters attacking the administration’s actions as antithetical to the rule of law.
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While the charges have now been dismissed, Ho noted that the court did not rule on their merits.
Now free from prosecution, Adams faces a tough reelection campaign in a crowded Democratic Party primary to be held on June 24. The combined force of the now-dismissed charges and his deal with the Trump administration have tainted his mayorship with corruption. He currently trails badly in the polls.