Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
The officials have also spoken to Mr. Adams’s defense team since Mr. Trump took office, the people said. The defense team is led by Alex Spiro, who is also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the president’s closest advisers.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September on charges including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions after an investigation that began in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty, maintained his innocence and contended that he is being prosecuted because he criticized the Biden administration.
In recent weeks, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has curried favor with Mr. Trump, traveling to Mar-a-Lago, attending the inauguration and saying that, from now on, he will share any criticisms of the president in private. Mr. Trump has the power to pardon Mr. Adams, and in December said that the mayor had been treated “pretty unfairly” by prosecutors, and suggested he was considering issuing a pardon.
The two men, according to several people close to the mayor, have been in direct communication for weeks, speaking on the phone.
A spokesman for the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment. The office is currently being led on an interim basis by a respected prosecutor selected by the administration. A spokeswoman for Mr. Spiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump’s nominee to be deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in his criminal cases over the last two years and is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, was not part of the discussions, a senior Justice Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Mr. Blanche has not yet gone through the Senate confirmation process.
Another Justice Department official said all communications between Manhattan prosecutors and Mr. Adams’s legal team about the case had gone through the office of the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove.
It is not unusual for leaders of the Justice Department in Washington to discuss high-profile criminal cases with their counterparts in Manhattan, and there is no indication that the Manhattan prosecutors are inclined to drop the case. But the timing of the discussions, before Mr. Trump’s choices for attorney general and U.S. attorney in Manhattan have been confirmed, raises questions.
It is also commonplace for defense lawyers in major cases to ask senior Justice Department officials in Washington to lessen or drop prosecutions. What is notable, however, is that such discussions are happening at a time when there is a skeleton crew of Trump administration officials running the department, which is undergoing major personnel and policy changes.
Mr. Adams presides over a so-called sanctuary city, one where Trump administration officials this week began a crackdown on undocumented migrants. The Justice Department is among the agencies leading that crackdown.
In a memo last week, Mr. Bove threatened to prosecute local officials who interfere with the administration’s immigration agenda. Mr. Bove is another of Mr. Trump’s former criminal defense lawyers.
In December, the mayor’s defense lawyers revealed in court papers that prosecutors had presented additional evidence to a grand jury in his case, suggesting that more charges could be coming against the mayor himself, his associates or both.
Earlier this month, prosecutors wrote in another filing that they had continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams” and “identify additional individuals involved,” another indication that new charges might be in the works. The filing provided no additional detail on the conduct they said they had uncovered.
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