A lawyer for Mayor Eric Adams of New York urged a Manhattan judge on Monday to promptly rule on a pending motion from the Justice Department to dismiss federal corruption charges against the mayor.
The lawyer, Alex Spiro, cited a Thursday deadline for Mr. Adams to file required petitions to appear on the Democratic mayoral primary ballot. Since that deadline is “just days away,” he wrote, “we respectfully urge the court to issue its decision as soon as practicable.”
Mr. Spiro noted that the dismissal motion had been pending before the judge, Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court, since mid-February. He quoted the judge’s own words in a February court hearing, when Judge Ho said, “it’s not in anyone’s interest here for this to drag on.”
As recently as March 18, Judge Ho wrote that he would “attempt to rule as soon as practicable on the pending motion to dismiss.”
The charges against Mr. Adams and the Justice Department’s efforts to have them dropped have led to turmoil in City Hall and hurt Mr. Adams’s chances of winning a second term.
The mayor had pleaded not guilty to the five charges he faces, which include bribery and wire fraud, and was scheduled for trial on April 21. Under the Biden administration, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office had pursued the case aggressively.
But after President Trump was elected, his administration reversed course, asking Judge Ho to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning the charges could be reinstated.
In the dismissal motion, a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, said prosecuting Mr. Adams would hinder his ability to assist in Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Bove submitted the motion to the court after Manhattan’s interim U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, resigned rather than obey an order that she file it.
Mr. Bove’s efforts to have the Adams case dismissed ultimately led to the resignations of at least seven other prosecutors in New York and Washington, including Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the mayor’s case.
In a scathing four-paragraph letter attacking the Justice Department’s rationale for seeking the case’s dismissal, Mr. Scotten wrote, “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.”
Usually, judges rule on government dismissal motions quickly and without comment. Judge Ho noted at the hearing, held Feb. 19, that courts had “very little discretion” in handling such dismissal motions and the government was the “first and presumptively best judge of whether a prosecution should be terminated.”
But what complicated the mayor’s case was the provision that would allow the charges to be brought again. That led critics to argue that Mr. Adams, with the threat of a future prosecution hanging over his head, would be beholden to the Trump administration rather than to his own constituents.
With the Justice Department and Mr. Adams agreeing the case should be dismissed, Judge Ho postponed the trial indefinitely and appointed an outside lawyer, Paul D. Clement, to provide the court with independent arguments.
Mr. Clement, in a court filing March 7, recommended that the case be dismissed but “with prejudice,” meaning the charges could not be brought again.
Mr. Spiro, writing to the judge on Monday, noted that Mr. Clement’s brief had highlighted the “distinct appearance problems inherent in a public official serving his constituents with the ever-looming prospect of re-indictment by the executive on charges already laid bare in a public indictment.”
Judges usually do not say when they are going to issue a decision. A Manhattan federal court spokesman, Edward Friedland, declined to comment on Mr. Spiro’s letter.
Mr. Spiro noted that when Judge Ho originally scheduled Mr. Adams’s trial to begin in April, the judge said he was “taking very seriously the public’s interest in a quick trial,” and Mr. Adams’s interest in one “specifically in light of the election calendar.”
Benjamin Weiser is a Times reporter covering the federal courts and U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, and the justice system more broadly. More about Benjamin Weiser
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