'Earthquake': Expert claims New York mayor 'beholden' to Trump after bribery case dropped
The Justice Department directive to end the corruption case against New York City mayor has roiled the legal community — and sets up a situation where he's personally beholden to the president, an expert said Tuesday.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who had previously served as defense attorney for Donald Trump, ordered federal prosecutors to drop bribery and corruption charges against the mayor, a Democrat who had increasingly aligned himself with the president in the final weeks of the 2024 campaign.
"It's easy to make light of this, but I've got to tell you, I feel like a broken record, but it's hard to overstate what an earthquake of a story this is in Justice Department circles, because you just don't see this," said NBC News correspondent Ken Dilanian.
"They explicitly said they were not dropping the case because of the facts or the law, that it was no reflection on the legal theories or the work of the career prosecutors who brought the case, and so what was their grounds? Well, it was, you know, charges without evidence that the U.S. attorney who had been appointed by [former] president [Joe] Biden, you know, was using the case to burnish his image, and also some concerns that the trial would take place during the New York primary season, even though the indictment was brought nine months before the New York primary."
ALSO READ: Dems in disarray: Unforced error nixes Elon Musk subpoena — and sparks infighting
The directive came down shortly after the mayor gathered his top commissioners and ordered them not to criticize the president or interfere with immigration enforcement in the city, and Adams has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and accepted a last-minute invitation to his inauguration.
"This what this is starting to look like is a political decision to drop charges against someone who, as you said, has been courting Donald Trump and the Trump administration and who has claimed that he was persecuted by the Biden administration because of his stance on immigration.," Dilanian said.
"They even said, actually, in their justification, that another issue they were concerned about was that he had lost his security clearance because he was under this criminal cloud and therefore couldn't cooperate with federal authorities in immigration enforcement. So, look, this is not done. I mean, it's, you know, it's creating the impression that, you know, there's a Biden Justice Department and a Trump Justice Department [and] these decisions are made for political reasons."
The move by Trump's former criminal defense attorney sets up a dynamic where the mayor of the nation's largest city owes the president a political favor.
"The Southern District of New York is full of career prosecutors who are apolitical, and they brought this case based on the facts and the law," Dilanian said. "There's a mountain of evidence, much of which they revealed in a speaking indictment that accuses Eric Adams of soliciting bribes and favors from the government of Turkey and then, in turn, doing the government of Turkey favors using his official position, including getting the approval for a building that the fire department said was unsafe to occupy in New York City, and so here you have a situation where there the main Justice [Department] is ordering the Southern District to drop this case."
"It hasn't been dropped yet, but then saying that it's being done without prejudice, meaning the charges could be refiled at any time," Dilanian added. "Well, what position does that leave Mayor Eric Adams in? He is now beholden to the Trump Justice Department. Those charges are hanging over him, so this is a really, really extraordinary situation."