A judge scrutinized the Justice Department‘s controversial decision to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams during a hearing on Wednesday and did not issue any rulings from the bench, further prolonging the case’s drawn-out end.
Judge Dale Ho, a Biden appointee, held the hearing to address what he said in court was a “somewhat unusual situation” in which the DOJ attempted to end a criminal case against a prominent public official but was met with significant backlash from its own prosecutors.
“It’s not in anyone’s interest here for this case to drag on,” Ho said, according to multiple reports from the courtroom in the Southern District of New York.
The court must authorize the dismissal of Adams’s charges, and Ho said he would “carefully” consider how to go about doing that after the judge spent the hourlong hearing methodically questioning Adams, Adams lawyer Alex Spiro, and acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.
The hearing came after the SDNY brought an indictment against Adams, a Democrat, last year. The Trump administration’s recent decision to terminate the case has caused upheaval at the DOJ and become a lightning rod in New York City.
The turmoil began when Bove, a Trump appointee, ordered the SDNY to dismiss Adams’s charges last week. The demand led to an unexpected string of at least seven resignations from officials at the SDNY and the DOJ’s public integrity section. It also prompted the judge’s unusual decision to hold the hearing on Wednesday instead of outright authorizing the case’s termination.
Bove, who appeared personally in the courtroom in New York, stood firm on his decision to toss out Adams’s charges in a feisty statement Wednesday after the hearing and warned that others should also quit their jobs if they were not in alignment with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
“I went to New York today to show the men and women of the Justice Department as well as the American people that I am personally committed to our shared fight: ending weaponized government, stopping the invasion of criminal illegal aliens, and eliminating drug cartels and transnational gangs from our homeland,” Bove said.
Bove said he understands that “there are templates for resignation letters available on the websites of the New York Times and CNN” for anyone who does not support the DOJ’s mission, a reference to letters from former employees that leaked to the media.
The SDNY lawyers who resigned were top officials with backgrounds that included clerking for conservative Supreme Court justices: Danielle Sassoon, whom Trump appointed as acting head of the SDNY, and Hagan Scotten, a Bronze Star recipient and former Special Forces officer. They each wrote in blistering resignation letters that they could not carry out Bove’s order to drop Adams’s charges in good faith.
After being rebuffed by the SDNY, Bove instead ordered officials in the public integrity section to dismiss Adams’s charges, and five employees there, including the section’s No. 1 and No. 2 leaders, responded by resigning.
Bove reacted aggressively by accusing Sassoon of insubordination and vowing to investigate her for possible ethics violations. He then found two other lawyers at the DOJ to dismiss Adams’s charges.
Bove has repeatedly cited two reasons for moving to dismiss Adams’s case: that former U.S. Attorney Damien Williams has allegedly spoken inappropriately about the case and that the indictment interferes with Adams’s ability to carry out his work as mayor, particularly when it comes to immigration enforcement.
Bove also told the SDNY the case should be dismissed “without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”
Ho’s questions, which the judge described as “elementary,” illuminated the contradicting messages coming out of the Trump DOJ regarding its decision to drop Adams’s charges. Unlike Bove, DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle claimed Wednesday in a thread on X that Adams’s case should be dropped because it was weak and politically motivated.
TRUMP DOJ RISKS UNDERMINING ITS INTEGRITY WITH ERIC ADAMS SAGA
Sassoon, meanwhile, accused the mayor and the Trump administration of engaging in an unethical quid pro quo behind the scenes, which involved Adams agreeing in a private meeting to cooperate with Trump’s immigration plans in New York City in exchange for Trump dropping his criminal charges. Adams and Bove denied this claim.
The SDNY brought the indictment against Adams, a former Brooklyn borough president, last year during the Biden administration, alleging he accepted illegal campaign donations and luxury international travel from foreign businesspeople and a Turkish government official. He used his political power to offer them “favorable treatment” in return, prosecutors alleged. Adams has maintained that he did nothing wrong.
