Left: Mayor of New York City Eric Adams leaves federal court on September 27, 2024 in Lower Manhattan, New York City after pleading not guilty to corruption charges (zz/Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx). Right: Dale E. Ho during his confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., in December 2021 (Forbes/YouTube).
A federal judge in New York City has order the attorneys for the Justice Department and Mayor Eric Adams to appear in court on Wednesday to address the agency’s controversial decision to drop the corruption charges against Adams amid accusations of a quid pro quo bargain between the mayor and the Trump administration.
The two-page order from U.S. District Judge Dale E. Ho comes one day after former Watergate prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney Nathaniel Akerman urged the court to deny the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case and appoint a special counsel to “advise the Court in resolving this unfortunate matter.”
In the six-page letter filed on Monday, Akerman asserted that the dismissal of the Adams case was “not in the public interest” as there was ample evidence that the DOJ’s actions are “part of a corrupt bargain” that will give the Trump administration “potent leverage” and “total control over Adams.”
“First, there is overwhelming evidence from DOJ’s own internal documents showing that the dismissal of the Adams indictment is not in the public interest and is part of a corrupt quid pro quo between Mayor Adams and the Trump administration. These internal documents show that in return for DOJ’s dismissal of the indictment, Mr. Adams agreed to improperly assist the Trump administration in its immigration enforcement priorities,” Akerman wrote. “A dismissal ‘without prejudice,’ is simply a sword of Damocles hanging over Adams, permitting the indictment to be re-filed at DOJ’s discretion, to ensure Mr. Adams follows the administration’s marching orders. Indeed, DOJ admitted in internal documents that this dismissal motion is not based on the proper grounds of innocence or lack of evidence.”
A dismissal “without prejudice” means that the DOJ is free to refile the charges against Adams again in the future.
Adams was indicted in September 2024 on charges of bribery, wire fraud, solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, and conspiracy to commit those offenses in connection with an investigation into Turkish donations to his mayoral campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and his trial was slated to begin in April.
However, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a former federal prosecutor who was more recently employed as Trump’s personal defense attorney, on Feb. 10, 2025, ordered prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) to dismiss the charges against Adams. In that memo, Bove wrote that the decision to toss the case was reached “without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”
According to Bove, the charges were dismissed because the public actions of the previous SDNY head “created appearances of impropriety,” the charges were “improperly” interfering with Adams’ 2025 mayoral campaign, and the prosecution “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to combat illegal immigration and violent crime.
The directive from Bove caused a flurry of career prosecutors to resign in protest. The first to resign was acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who penned a scathing letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in which she asserted that Bove sought dismissal of the Adams case “in return for” the mayor’s assistance in cracking down on illegal immigration in Manhattan, one of the Trump administration’s primary objectives.
Sassoon also wrote about a Jan. 31, 2025, meeting she and other members of her team attended with Bove and Adams’ defense attorney, Alex Spiro.
“Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,” she wrote. “Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.”
Spiro on Tuesday continued to deny any quid pro quo with the administration in a letter to Ho, a Joe Biden appointee, saying the charges were dismissed because ” it was the just thing to do because the case was exceptionally weak on the merits.”
Ho’s Tuesday order states that both parties will appear in court on Wednesday to address “the reasons for the Government’s motion, the scope and effect of Mayor Adams’s ‘consent[] in writing,’, and the procedure for resolution of the motion.”
