On Monday, President Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, directed the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan to dismiss the indictment against Mayor Adams for bribery and mail fraud. Bove also directed the acting U.S. attorney that “[t]here shall be no further targeting of Mayor Adams or additional investigative steps.”
That indictment accuses Adams of ripping off the New York City Campaign Finance Board matching program of $10 million by disguising illegal foreign and corporate campaign donations and accepting bribes from the Turkish government in return for special treatment from New York City agencies.
The DOJ memo to the U.S. attorney’s office setting forth the reasons for the dismissal conclusively shows the corrupt bargain between Trump and Adams. Remarkably, nowhere in the memo does it purport to claim that Adams is innocent of the charges.
Initially, the memo justifies the dismissal of the Adams indictment on the ground that “the timing of the charges and more recent public actions by the former U.S. attorney responsible for initiating the case have threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including by increasing prejudicial publicity that risks impacting potential witnesses and the jury pool.”
As support for that statement, Bove relies on Adams’ criticism of the Biden administration’s “immigration policies before the indictment was filed.” In a Trumpian fashion, Bove cites zero proof of such a causal connection.
Bove also asserts that “the former U.S. attorney’s actions created appearances of impropriety,” again without describing what any of those actions were.
There are no facts anywhere in this memo to support Bove’s statement that a proper jury could not be assembled through the normal process of the court questioning individual jurors as to whether each can be fair and impartial. It is telling that Adams’ lawyers never raised this as a pretrial issue before the district court judge.
The icing on the cake is Bove’s false claim that “the pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration.”
Bove further cited “the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams’ ability to support critical, ongoing federal efforts “to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement.”
This is a totally bogus justification for dismissing Adams’ indictment. To date, Adams has fully cooperated with the Trump administration policy of targeting immigrants and has insisted that his indictment is not interfering with his official mayoral duties.
Indeed, based on the memo, the inescapable conclusion is that Trump is directing the dismissal of Adams’ indictment to control Adams and to ensure he follows Trump’s directives. Bove made it difficult, if not impossible, for Adams to escape Trump’s control by specifying that Adams’ indictment will be dismissed without prejudice and “the matter will be reviewed after the 2025 mayoral election.”
“Without prejudice” means that if Adams does not dance to Trump’s tune, the indictment can be reinstated against Adams. This boils down to nothing more than bribery — dismissing the charges in return for whatever benefits Trump can exact from Adams.
Bove attempted in a footnote to dispel such a corrupt bargain with the self-serving statement that “the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement.” However, the memo shows the contours of this corrupt deal that makes Adams a lapdog for Trump.
There is a way for the federal district judge presiding over the Adams prosecution to stop the Justice Department dead in its tracks. Rule 48 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that “the government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment.”
The Supreme Court has recognized that the phrase “with leave of court” means the district court is empowered “to deny a government dismissal motion to which the defendant has consented if the motion is prompted by considerations clearly contrary to the public interest.”
There can be little doubt that this corrupt bargain between Trump and Adams is contrary to the public interest and provides a sound basis to deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss and to order that the Adams prosecution proceed.
Last week, I wrote in this column that one sure fire way to undermine the Trump DOJ dismissal of Adams’ indictment or Trump’s pardon of Adams is for the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, to indict Adams for the same criminality based on state charges. Trump and his Justice Department are powerless to undermine state charges.
Akerman was formerly an assistant special Watergate prosecutor and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.