The Justice Department plans to drop its corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, according to reports.
On Monday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the US District Court for the Southern District of New York to dismiss Adams’ federal case without prejudice.
In a memo obtained by The Independent, Bove requested that the pending charges in United States v. Adams be dismissed as soon as possible, subject to the conditions outlined below.
“The Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based, which are issues on which we defer to the U.S. Attorney’s Office at this time.”
It follows weeks of speculation that Adams had spoken with President Donald Trump about his federal criminal case. The Democratic mayor has been accused of accepting bribes and campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
It was a victory for Adams, a Democrat who insisted on his innocence and claimed the charges were politically motivated as retaliation for criticizing former President Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
Despite being a Democrat in the country’s largest blue city, Adams sought to strengthen his relationship with the president, who was also facing federal criminal charges, which he claimed were politically motivated.
The mayor defied his party’s usual criticisms of Trump and praised the president’s anti-immigrant agenda, believing it would benefit New York City, which has seen an increase in the number of migrants.
Adams previously stated that the city lacked the resources to handle the influx and chastised the Biden administration for not providing him with federal assistance.
Trump later announced that he would consider pardoning Adams.
Federal prosecutors in New York indicted Adams in September following a years-long investigation into alleged corruption within the mayor’s circle.
They claimed he unlawfully accepted more than $100,000 in benefits from the Turkish government, many of which were travel luxuries, in exchange for assisting in the expediting of the Turkish consulate building in Manhattan.
Prosecutors also accused the mayor of accepting campaign donations through an illegal “straw donor” scheme and using a public matching fund program to boost the total.
Adams, who is running for re-election, was scheduled to go on trial in April.
Adams’ case was made all the more prominent for Trump because he is the mayor of New York City, which is known as a “sanctuary city” for immigrants.
Trump and his administration have begun targeting major cities like New York in order to carry out Trump’s promised mass deportation plan, which would forcibly remove millions of undocumented immigrants. The administration had asked sanctuary city leaders to cooperate with federal immigration officers.
When asked about immigration enforcement conducting sweeps in New York, Adams stated in January that the city would “not hesitate to partner with federal authorities to bring violent criminals to justice” and directed the New York Police Department to cooperate with those officials.
This appeared to solidify Adams’ and Trump’s alliance on immigration.
Earlier this month, Adams attended Trump’s inauguration at the last minute, canceling several Martin Luther King Jr. Day events in New York. Later, he appeared on the show of Tucker Carlson, a far-right conservative pundit.
Then, on Friday, Adams’ defense lawyer, Alex Spiro, was spotted meeting with Justice Department officials in Washington, DC.
