By Luc Cohen and Jack Queen
(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors on Friday formally asked a judge to drop bribery charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, after a Justice Department official’s order for them to do so sparked mass resignations.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho still must sign off on the request to dismiss the five-count criminal indictment brought last September charging Adams, a Democrat, with accepting travel perks from Turkish officials and political donations from foreigners in exchange for taking actions to benefit Turkey. Adams had pleaded not guilty.
In a memo sent to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office on February 10, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove wrote that the order to drop the charges had nothing to do with the merits of the case, and that the Justice Department was not questioning the integrity of the prosecutors who brought it.
Instead, Bove wrote that the indictment – brought by federal prosecutors during Democratic former President Joe Biden’s term – interfered with Adams’ 2025 mayoral re-election campaign, and that the case was distracting Adams from supporting President Donald Trump’s administration on immigration enforcement.
“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to … illegal immigration and violent crime,” Bove, Trump’s former personal lawyer and a political appointee, wrote in the memo seen by Reuters.
Trump, a Republican, has made curbing illegal immigration and stepping up deportations centerpieces of his second term as president.
Danielle Sassoon, who the Trump administration picked last month to serve as Manhattan U.S. Attorney on a temporary basis, resigned on Thursday rather than comply with the order. Five other Justice Department officials also resigned.
“I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged,” Sassoon wrote in a February 12 letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi seen by Reuters. “I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations.”
Sassoon also said that her office was prepared to seek a new indictment accusing Adams of destroying evidence. Alex Spiro, Adams’ lawyer, said in an emailed statement, “This newest false claim is just the parting shot of a misguided prosecution exposed as a sham.”
Since returning to office on January 20, Trump also has reversed some high-profile prosecutions carried out during Biden’s presidency such as pardoning people convicted of taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In addition, the Adams case is not the first one involving a prominent political figure convicted of corruption to be undone under Trump. Democratic former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was given a full pardon by Trump on Monday .
Adams, 64, has argued that he was unfairly targeted by Biden’s administration because he criticized its immigration policy over a surge in migration to New York, the most populous U.S. city.
In his memo, Bove wrote that the directive to dismiss the charges was not in exchange for the mayor’s cooperation on federal immigration enforcement. But Bove appeared to endorse the assertion by Adams that he was prosecuted for political reasons.
“It cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior administration’s immigration policies before the charges were filed,” Bove wrote.
The directive amounted to an extraordinary intervention by Justice Department officials in a high-profile criminal matter brought by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, an office that in the past has fiercely guarded its independence from political appointees in Washington.
In his first three weeks back in the White House, Trump has overseen an overhaul of the Justice Department and the FBI that critics have said threatens the norm of insulating federal law enforcement from partisan politics.
ADAMS FORGED TIES WITH TRUMP
Adams, a former police captain, began his term in 2022 as a close ally of Biden. But that year, Adams began calling on Washington to boost funding to New York to deal with an influx in migrants.
For months, Adams has sought to forge closer ties with Trump, fueling speculation that he might have been trying to secure a pardon. Adams attended Trump’s inauguration in January.
Trump, who in 2023 pleaded not guilty to four sets of criminal indictments he said were politically motivated, has expressed sympathy for Adams’ claim he was targeted by prosecutors for political reasons.
In December, before his inauguration, Trump said he would consider pardoning the mayor.
In a court filing last month, prosecutors disputed Adams’ assertion that he was targeted because of politics and said their investigation began more than a year before Adams started publicly criticizing the Biden administration.
Adams, seeking reelection, faces several challengers in the June Democratic primary in New York City mayor’s race.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Jack Queen; editing by Will Dunham)
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