Eric Adams has been a lousy mayor for the most part, one who couldn’t see the loaf for the crumbs and squandered his political capital on maintaining a dizzying array of corrupt friends and cronies.
Despite being a gifted politician with a popular platform, voters had buyer’s remorse by the end of his first year — long before the feds raided his inner circle, seized his phones and finally slapped the sitting mayor with historic criminal corruption charges last September.
Trump’s Justice Department ordered prosecutors to drop those charges, with several resigning rather than doing so in a “Thursday Afternoon Massacre” before the acting number two at Justice finally signed the papers himself on Friday night asking the judge to do so.
He’s not saying, as Trump has, that Adams was wrongly charged but dubiously claiming that a trial scheduled for this April came too close to the city’s election, with the Democratic primary in June and the general election in November.
And that the charges had hindered Adams’ ability to assist the new president’s agenda — even as he’s kept open the possibility of reopening the case against Adams after November’s election.
As the lead prosecutor, clearly no “deep stater,” put it in his resignation letter, “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”
But here we are.
Trump issued an executive order to end what he wrote had been the Biden administration’s “third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” but clearly he just wants to wield those weapons himself. Yes, puppet.
The Democrats running against Adams and a growing chorus of others in New York are now calling on him to resign or for someone else to step in to do what the feds won’t.
There are calls for the judge in Adams’ case to appoint a special prosecutor instead of dismissing it, for Attorney General Letitia James to probe the deal Trump cut with Adams, and for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to bring local charges.
For various reasons, none of that seems likely to happen and none of it would bring immediate satisfaction — just a new season of the same “will he get away with it again” anti-hero drama.
But mostly the growing chorus — including the lieutenant governor preparing to run against his boss — is pressing Gov. Hochul to fire Adams, who’s kicking off his reelection bid by going on a humiliating press tour with Trump “Border Czar” Tom Honan and ridiculously telling New Yorkers that a political dispensation from the MAGA king amounts to a complete exoneration.
On Tuesday afternoon, the weathervane governor suggested she wouldn’t turn on the mayor who’s been a political ally, since it “does not feel like something that’s very democratic.”
But by Thursday evening, Hochul signaled she was more open to the possibility, saying that while “the allegations are extremely concerning and serious… this just happened. I need some time to process this.”
She should keep processing, and then stand by her gut that it wouldn’t be democratic to fire the mayor New Yorkers elected, months before they can decide for themselves.
Hochul, of course, has the power to fire Adams because her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, resigned mid-term after a damaging report commissioned by James, his fellow Trump foil, about a torrent of sexual harassment claims proved to be the last straw.
If Hochul does fire Adams, Cuomo — who’s kept a careful distance from Adams and a conspicuous silence about his problems — would almost surely enter the mayor’s race as its frontrunner instead of running against Hochul next year to win back his old job.
Exhausting! It can’t be turtles all the way down, an endless series of law-, rule- and norm-breaking “emergencies.”
However much Hizzoner has demeaned himself in the schemes he was criminally charged for and then in sucking up to Trump to get off the legal hook, there’s no line he’s crossed that would justify removing a democratically elected mayor. No reason voters can’t judge Adams for themselves.
Democratic Party leaders need to stay out of their own way for once, and let New Yorkers decide on our own mayor.
“Out of the ruins, out from the wreckage, can’t make the same mistake this time,” the great Tina Turner belted out to open her “Thunderdome” classic, “We Don’t Need Another Hero.”
Amen, and we don’t need another judge or prosecutor or governor to save us from Adams. We just need ourselves
Siegel ([email protected]) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.