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Adams Judge Taps Lawyer to Review DOJ Move to Drop Charges
Ava Benny-Morrison and Bob Van Voris
5 min read
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge declined to immediately dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, instead appointing a prominent conservative lawyer to examine the Trump Justice Department’s move to drop the case.
US District Judge Dale Ho on Friday said he was appointing former US Solicitor General Paul Clement to consider arguments on the motion. Ho said there had been no testing of the government’s position on dismissing the case, and Clement’s appointment was appropriate to help the court reach a decision.
“That is particularly so in light of the public importance of this case, which calls for careful deliberation,” Ho wrote in his order. The judge asked for submissions from the government and Adams by March 7 and said he would hold a hearing a week later if necessary.
Clement’s appointment denies a quick legal reprieve for the first sitting mayor in New York City’s modern history to be charged with a federal crime and casts further doubt on his political future. The judge had faced calls to investigate whether the Justice Department engaged in an improper quid pro quo with Adams in exchange for his support for President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
The Justice Department didn’t respond to requests for comment. Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Adams, didn’t respond to a request for comment on Ho’s order, but a spokesperson for the attorney pointed to a separate filing by the lawyer on Friday.
In that filing, Spiro noted recent statements made by Attorney General Pam Bondi characterizing the case as “incredibly weak” from a legal standpoint. He said that showed the decision to drop the case was not based solely on policy determinations.
“The Department of Justice has realized its error and now seeks to correct the prior administration’s mistake,” Spiro said.
At a hearing before Ho on Wednesday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said the government did not believe the judge had discretion to conduct a wide-ranging investigation.
Ho’s choice of Clement is a canny one. The lawyer is perhaps most famous for defending a law against same-sex marriage before the US Supreme Court. The judge, on the other hand, is an appointee of President Joe Biden who was previously a senior lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.
Bove’s Feb. 10 order to drop the case sparked turmoil within both the Justice Department and New York government. The directive was refused by interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who resigned after raising concerns about a possible quid pro quo in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. The heads of the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington also resigned rather than file the request to dismiss the case.
Among the issues Ho said Clement would examine is whether to dismiss the case with or without prejudice, the latter meaning it can be re-filed in the future. Bove had requested that it be dismissed without prejudice, sparking accusations that the administration wanted to continue to exert leverage over the mayor.
At the hearing, Ho asked Adams if he understood that the request for dismissal without prejudice meant the case could be revived.
“I have not committed a crime,” the mayor responded. “I do not see them bringing it back. I’m not afraid of that.”
Four of Adams’ deputy mayors resigned, and New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who has the power to remove Adams from office, convened a Feb. 18 meeting with other city Democrats to discuss the mayor’s future.
Adams pleaded not guilty and has refused to step down. Both he and the Justice Department have denied the existence of any quid pro quo. Adams has he was politically targeted over his criticisms of Biden administration immigration policies, a claim Trump and Bove have echoed. Sassoon and prosecutors directly involved in the case have denied any political motive behind the indictment.
Bove came to New York to appear before Ho himself, an unusual move for a Justice Department official at his level.
“Based on my representations as the decision maker, that’s why I’m here today,” Bove said in court, “is to make very clear and so you can look me in the eye and see how I came to these conclusions and we can talk about them.”
Bove argued the indictment against Adams was preventing the mayor from enforcing Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and from campaigning ahead of the mayoral election in November. He also took aim at the Manhattan federal prosecutors who brought the case last year, claiming there was at minimum the appearance of impropriety if not an abuse of the justice process.
Acknowledging he had limited authority to deny the government’s request, Ho regardless spent more than an hour peppering the government and Adams’ lawyers about the motion to dismiss the case.
Adams was charged in September with accepting illegal campaign donations and taking luxury travel upgrades in exchange for pressuring city fire officials to permit a new Turkish consulate office tower to open. The mayor pleaded not guilty and resisted calls to step down. In recent months he had begun courting Trump, meeting at the President’s Mar-A-Lago home, and attending Inauguration Day.
--With assistance from Chris Strohm and Chris Dolmetsch.
(Updates with separate filing by Adams’ lawyer starting in sixth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected Adams’ plea.)
