A senior Justice Department official suggested Wednesday that President Trump’s administration is justified in prioritizing a public official’s political cooperation over prosecutors’ suspicions that the official might have broken the law.
The official, Emil Bove III, raised the idea during a hearing on Wednesday at which a judge asked him to explain his rationale for abandoning a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.
In response to questions from the judge, Mr. Bove renewed his assertion that the prosecution should be dismissed because it was hindering Mr. Adams’s cooperation with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The judge, Dale E. Ho, asked whether that logic could apply to other officials with critical public safety and national security responsibilities in New York. “Like the police commissioner, for example?” the judge asked.
“Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Bove said.
Mr. Bove’s striking response appears to be the first time the Trump Justice Department has said publicly that its rationale for seeking dismissal of the corruption charges against the mayor could apply more broadly. His answer underscored how the Justice Department has begun to shift into an enforcement arm of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Judge Ho ended the hearing Wednesday without ruling on whether he would grant the government’s request to drop the charges. But the exchange emphasized the knotty issues at play in the Adams case, and the judge’s restraint prolonged a turbulent episode that has shaken the Justice Department, led to the resignations of at least eight prosecutors and resulted in calls for the mayor to leave office.
One of those prosecutors who quit, the interim head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, said that at a meeting in Washington with Mr. Bove and prosecutors, Mr. Adams’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo.” She said that the mayor had effectively offered his full cooperation with President Trump’s immigration agenda in exchange for the dismissal of the charges against him.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent,” Ms. Sassoon wrote in her resignation letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Mr. Bove and Mr. Adams’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, both have vigorously denied that any deal preceded the government’s motion to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams, who has pleaded not guilty.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Mr. Adams said no aspect of his agreement with the government had been left out of court filings. He also said he was not promised anything or threatened to induce his agreement to the dismissal motion.
Mr. Bove said the mayor’s answers under oath refuted the idea there had been a quid pro quo.
Judge Ho, as the hearing ended, did not say signal how or when he would rule. “It’s not in anyone’s interest here for this to drag on,” he said.
Mr. Bove’s justification for the dismissal contradicts the mayor’s own statements. Mr. Adams has insisted that the indictment has not been a distraction from running New York City.
“I can do my job. My legal team is going to handle the case,” the mayor said in December on Bloomberg Television. He added: “People said it was going to be a distraction. I’m moving forward, and I’m going to continue to deliver for the people of the City of New York.”
Mr. Bove, in a statement after the hearing, said that his appearance at the hearing had been meant to convey his personal commitment to “ending weaponized government” and “stopping the invasion of criminal illegal aliens.”
In court, Mr. Bove’s manner was more muted. After answering questions from the judge, he made a straightforward request: that the charges against Mr. Adams be dismissed immediately so the mayor could “get back to work, unhindered, unburdened.”
Judge Ho also had questions for Mr. Adams, who sat at the defense table between his two lawyers. Mr. Adams told him he had agreed to the dismissal of the charges against him “without prejudice” — meaning that the Justice Department could refile them.
“Judge, I have not committed a crime and I don’t see them bringing it back,” Mr. Adams said. “I’m not afraid of that.”
Mr. Adams appeared calm throughout the hearing, sitting between Mr. Spiro and another of his lawyers, William A. Burck.
In contrast, Mr. Spiro seemed frustrated as Judge Ho asked him about deadlines related to the case. Instead of answering directly, Mr. Spiro suggested that the judge had little discretion to deny the government’s attempt to dismiss the case — a point that Judge Ho himself had acknowledged several times.
Judge Ho asked Mr. Spiro about his assertion in a letter that Mr. Adams had not promised further help with the immigration crackdown in exchange for ending the case. Mr. Spiro offered to swear an oath “to anyone who suggests such a thing, because it never happened.”
The hearing on Wednesday was the culmination of an episode that has caused political and legal upheavals in New York.
Last week, after the resignation of Ms. Sassoon and six other federal prosecutors, Mr. Bove signed his name to a motion to dismiss the case. Several of Mr. Adams’ campaign opponents then called for his resignation, as did other city officials.
Judge Ho began Wednesday’s hearing by saying he wanted to proceed carefully. Throughout the hearing, he was methodical and direct — first asking Mr. Adams about his understanding of the agreement with the government, before delving into a lengthy questioning of Mr. Bove.
The judge told the lawyers it was a “very complicated situation, at least from where I sit.”
The judge’s questions for Mr. Bove centered on the rationale that guided the government’s motion to dismiss the case against Mr. Adams.
Last week, Mr. Bove directed Manhattan prosecutors to seek an end to the prosecution of Mr. Adams. In his directive, Mr. Bove said explicitly that the desire to throw out the charges was not based on the case’s legal merits. The case, he said, was impeding the mayor’s ability to aid Mr. Trump’s program of mass deportation.
In court, Mr. Bove held firmly to the argument. The request to stop the case ahead of a scheduled April trial was “a standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” Mr. Bove said, adding that the indictment had cost Mr. Adams his security clearances and “impacts the national security and immigration objectives” of the president.
Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for President Trump, told Judge Ho that the prosecution had “appearances of impropriety” and represented an abuse of the criminal justice system.
The hearing was a window into issues that could test the limits of prosecutorial independence in the Trump era and the president’s drive to use the Justice Department to carry out his policy goals. After Mr. Adams was charged last year, he allied himself closely with Mr. Trump, who said the mayor had been treated unfairly by Manhattan prosecutors.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has long been known for its independence, referred to affectionately as the “sovereign district.” But in the Adams case, Justice Department officials have demonstrated that they will have little tolerance for that tradition. Mr. Bove conveyed as much in his statement.
“There are no separate sovereigns in this executive branch,” he said.
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