The federal judge overseeing the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams on Tuesday rejected an attempt by his lawyers to have a bribery charge against him thrown out.
In a 30-page order, Judge Dale E. Ho rebuffed arguments by Mr. Adams’s lawyers that the prosecution’s case fell short of meeting the federal definition of bribery, which prosecutors said had occurred when Mr. Adams accepted luxury travel from the Turkish government in exchange for pressuring Fire Department officials to sign off on the opening of a high-rise consulate building in Manhattan.
In arguing that the bribery count — one of five Mr. Adams faces — be dismissed, his lawyers had pointed to recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that raised the bar for prosecutors to bring corruption cases.
Judge Ho, in his decision, acknowledged that the application of the law had evolved, but found that the indictment was sufficient. He said that Mr. Adams’s lawyers had raised genuine questions about whether too much time had passed between the benefits Mr. Adams was accused of receiving and the actions he was accused of taking in return. But he said such questions should be resolved at trial — where the Supreme Court rulings could still pose a significant challenge for the government’s case.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York secured an indictment against Mr. Adams in late September, making him the first sitting mayor in the modern history of New York City to face criminal charges.
The pressuring of the Fire Department officials, who had delayed the opening of the Turkish consulate building over safety concerns, was a central focus of the charging document. Prosecutors said that when Mr. Adams reached out to the Fire Department in 2021, the officials believed they “would lose their jobs” if they did not approve the consulate’s opening. Mr. Adams had won the Democratic mayoral primary and was all but certain to become the next mayor, and he had appealed directly to the fire commissioner for the assistance, prosecutors said.
Lawyers for Mr. Adams had argued, among other things, that prosectors were being too vague in their allegations and in the timeline they had laid out.
“It doesn’t actually allege an agreement to take official action,” John Bash, a lawyer for Mr. Adams, said at a hearing last month, noting that Mr. Adams was not yet mayor when he messaged the fire commissioner. “It is agreed that Mayor Adams had no regulatory authority on that matter.”
But Hagan Cordell Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the case, shot back.
“Agreements like this are implicit,” he said. “They evolve in the minds of the defendant and his co-conspirators. There’s not going to be a precise date.”
Judge Ho wrote on Tuesday that there had been precedent to support the argument “that an official may be criminally liable for exerting pressure on another official” even without having formal authority. The judge determined that such an argument was being made in the case against Mr. Adams, who was the Brooklyn borough president at the time.
Judge Ho wrote that it will be up to a jury to decide whether or not Mr. Adams used his official position to exert pressure on the Fire Department.
Alex Spiro, one of Mr. Adams’s lawyers, said in a statement on Tuesday that the ruling was evidence that the prosecution’s case was “contrived.”
“It took several months for the court to unwind its legal theories — questioning several of them in its ruling — and proving the point that this case was simply invented to harm Mayor Adams and not about justice at all,” he said.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.
Besides bribery, Mr. Adams is charged with fraud; conspiracy to commit fraud and receive illegal foreign campaign contributions; and two counts of soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty.
He is scheduled for trial on April 21 after the judge on Tuesday also rejected his request to move the trial up to April 1.
The judge’s decision came a day after President-elect Donald J. Trump said he would consider pardoning Mr. Adams. The two men have become unlikely bedfellows in recent months, with Mr. Trump suggesting that Mr. Adams was the target of a politically motivated prosecution.
“Being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded,” Mr. Trump said on Monday, adding that he would review the details of Mr. Adams’s case.
Mr. Adams has said that prosecutors targeted him for criticizing the Biden administration over its handling of an influx of more than 200,000 migrants to the city.
Once a registered Republican, Mr. Adams recently opened the door to becoming a Republican again, and two of his advisers have been trying to secure a ticket for him to attend Mr. Trump’s inauguration next month.
Mr. Adams has said he will seek a second term next year, but on Monday, the New York City Campaign Finance Board ruled that he was not eligible to participate in the city’s generous matching funds program, cutting him off from millions of dollars in contributions.
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