Lawyers for the US Department of Justice and New York City Mayor Eric Adams are set to face a federal judge who is signaling that he is unlikely to approve their request to drop the mayor’s corruption charges weeks before an April trial.
Judge Dale Ho in Manhattan scheduled the hearing after three government lawyers from Washington made the dismissal request on Friday last week.
Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor resigned after she refused an order to do so.
Photo: Reuters
Ho already indicated that the hearing was likely to be only an initial step when he wrote in an order on Tuesday that one subject on the agenda would be a discussion of “procedure for resolution of the motion.”
Also set for discussion are the reasons for the request to dismiss the indictment against the Democrat that charges the first-term mayor with accepting more than US$100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and travel perks from a Turkish official and business leaders seeking to buy his influence while he was Brooklyn borough president.
Adams has pleaded not guilty.
Early last week, US Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told prosecutors in New York in a memo to drop the charges because the prosecution “has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime.”
Bove said that charges could be reinstated after November’s mayoral election.
Two days later, then-interim US attorney Danielle Sassoon wrote to US Attorney General Pam Bondi, saying Bove’s request to drop charges in return for assistance in enforcing federal immigration laws would betray Bondi’s own words that she “will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior or other forms of misconduct.”
“Dismissal of the indictment for no other reason than to influence Adams’ mayoral decisionmaking would be all three,” said Sassoon of what she called a “quid pro quo” deal as she offered to resign.
She also said prosecutors were about to bring additional obstruction of justice charges against Adams.
Bove accepted her resignation and accused her of “pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case.”
He told her that two prosecutors assigned to the case were suspended with pay and that an investigation would determine if they keep their jobs.
If either of those prosecutors wished to comply with his directive to dismiss charges, he welcomed them to do so, but Hagan Scotten quit the following day, writing in a resignation letter that he supported Sassoon’s actions.
Scotten wrote to Bove that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet his demand to drop the charges, “but it was never going to be me.”
In all, seven prosecutors, including five high-ranking prosecutors at the justice department in Washington, had resigned by Friday.
On Tuesday, Alex Spiro, a lawyer for the mayor, wrote to the judge, saying those who believed that Adams struck a “quid pro quo” with prosecutors were wrong.
“There was no quid pro quo. Period,” Spiro said.
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