Judge says dismissal of Eric Adams corruption case removes Trump immigration leverage

By Greg B. Smith | April 2, 2025, 10:10 a.m.
A federal judge dismissed Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case Wednesday, eliminating the possibility that the Trump Department of Justice could reopen the case but also squarely taking aim at the administration’s rationale for killing the case.

In dismissing the charges “with prejudice,” Manhattan Federal Judge Dale Ho rejected the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” based on the argument that the mayor’s indictment on bribery and campaign finance fraud charges was interfering with his ability to assist the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement initiative.

“Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” the judge asserted.

Ho said that dismissing the case without prejudice would have created “the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”

The dismissal comes just weeks before the June 24 mayor primary and a day before the mayor is required to file petition signatures his campaign is collecting to get on the ballot.

Last September, Manhattan federal prosecutors charged Adams with soliciting and accepting illegal campaign donations, including some from foreign sources tied to the Turkish government, that helped him generate $10 million in public matching funds during his 2021 election to City Hall. He also accepted more than $120,000 in travel perks arranged by the Turkish consulate, they alleged.

Adams denied wrongdoing and in February the newly arrived Trump Justice Department asked Ho to toss the case. But because they left the door open to reopen it down the road, a chorus of elected officials and good government types charged that the mayor was now a hostage to the administration. 

Four top deputies resigned in protest, and the mayor’s standing in the polls plummeted.

Ho took his time in ruling on the dismissal request, however, allowing third parties to file so-called “friend of the court” briefs arguing both for dismissing the case with prejudice and holding a hearing to explore the nature of the Justice Department’s decision. The department acknowledged that it had not examined the merits of the case, and the acting Manhattan U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon, refused to follow the order and resigned in protest.

The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case created an uproar that continues to resonate in the mayoral race.

The judge rejected an argument several third-party “friends of the court” had made urging him to deny DOJ’s motion, arguing that the department’s reasons for tossing the case were against the public interest.

He made a point of stating that many of those arguments “have merit,” agreeing with their assertions that the DOJ’s decision to seek to dismiss the case without assessing the merits of the charges filed against the mayor raised serious questions about that action’s integrity.

Ho zeroed in on the Trump administration’s claim that the mayor’s ability to cooperate with the administration’s efforts to deport undocumented individuals had been hamstrung by the time he had to focus on the indictment.

“Such an assertion is similarly unsubstantiated,” he wrote, noting that shortly after the DOJ filed the motion to dismiss, Adams announced he was planning to allow federal immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to operate on Rikers Island — “an act that appears to be contrary to New York City law.”

“The record does not show that this case has impaired Mayor Adams in his immigration enforcement efforts,” the judge wrote. “Instead it shows that after the DOJ decided to seek dismissal of his case, the Mayor took at least one new immigration related action consistent with the preferences of the new administration.”

He also rejected claims that the Manhattan U.S. attorney brought the case for political reasons. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who filed the actual motion, had cited a January op-ed by former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams that criticized corruption in New York City and state government. 

“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” he wrote. “The record before the Court indicates that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York prosecutors who worked on this case followed all appropriate Justice Department guidelines.”

He further took issue with the DOJ’s contention that the timing of filing of the charges — nine months before the primary — was somehow improperly interfering with the election. Ho asserted that the timing of the case “is entirely consistent with prior public corruption prosecutions.”

Within an hour of Ho’s decision going public, Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, who has from the start attacked the case as weak, stated, “The case against Eric Adams should have never been brought in the first place — and finally today that case is gone forever. From Day 1, the mayor has maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorkers has prevailed.”

This article has been republished from The City. It was written by Greg B. Smith and published on April 2, 2025 at 10:10 am. The original article is available here: https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/04/02/mayor-eric-adams-corruption-case-dismissed.

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