More than a year after the Trump administration abandoned a federal corruption indictment against Eric Adams, then the mayor of New York City, a government watchdog is asking Manhattan’s top prosecutor to pursue the case in state court.
Mr. Adams was charged by federal prosecutors in 2024 with bribery, soliciting illegal campaign donations and defrauding the city’s campaign finance program. It was the first federal indictment of a sitting New York City mayor in modern history.
But when President Trump returned to the White House, his Justice Department took the highly unusual step of moving to dismiss the case as Mr. Adams prepared for what would ultimately be a failed re-election bid. The department said at the time that the indictment was hindering Mr. Trump’s deportation campaign, part of a rationale that Judge Dale E. Ho called “unprecedented and breathtaking in its sweep.”
Now, the prominent watchdog group, Citizens Union, is seeking accountability for Mr. Adams.
“The allegations set forth in the indictment were grave,” Grace Rauh, its executive director, wrote in a letter to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, that was shared with The New York Times. “These alleged offenses are not merely federal in character.”
Mr. Bragg is a former federal prosecutor in the office that charged Mr. Adams and has brought corruption cases in both federal and state court. His spokeswoman, Danielle Filson, said in a statement that his office appreciated the outreach by Citizens Union and that his prosecutors had “considered all available and feasible avenues suggested in this letter at the time of the federal dismissal.”
Former state and federal corruption prosecutors say that resurrecting the Adams case — built over several years by federal prosecutors, F.B.I. agents and city investigators — and prevailing at a trial in state court would pose an enormous challenge.
They cited several obstacles. The most daunting may be the posture of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. Though that office obtained the indictment against Mr. Adams, it is unlikely that its current leader, Jay Clayton, would cooperate with Mr. Bragg if he chose to go forward.
Ms. Filson would not address whether Mr. Bragg had sought assistance from federal prosecutors after the indictment was dismissed last year, but people familiar with the case said federal authorities had made it clear then that they would not cooperate.
A spokesman for the Southern District declined to comment.
Without the evidence that federal prosecutors developed during their investigation of Mr. Adams, rebuilding the case would require enormous resources. Several of the former corruption prosecutors argued it would be likely to fail.
Anthony Capozzolo, a defense lawyer who previously worked as both a state and federal prosecutor and handled high-profile corruption cases, said a state case without the cooperation of the U.S. attorney’s office would be “close to unprosecutable.”
State prosecutors would also confront limitations in state law, including a key state corruption statute that caps the top charge at the misdemeanor level. State law also bars the use of accomplice testimony to corroborate evidence.
But Ms. Rauh argued in her letter that Mr. Bragg’s investigation need not be identical to the federal one, and she urged his office to also look into “other potential misconduct or violations of law, including conduct that may have occurred following the termination of the federal investigation.”
Early in his tenure, Mr. Bragg seemed eager to tackle public corruption cases. He tangled frequently with Mr. Trump and his allies, prosecuting Stephen K. Bannon following a federal pardon, and Allen H. Weisselberg, the president’s longtime financial gatekeeper. He won the sole conviction of Mr. Trump, on 34 felonies; the case is on appeal.
He also took aim at city officials like Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Mr. Adams’s former top aide,Her case is ongoing.
During Mr. Trump’s second term, the Justice Department has disbanded or downsized units focused on public corruption investigations and moved to dismiss large corruption indictments. Exceptions have been made, as federal prosecutors have charged some current and former public officials in service of the president’s retribution campaign.
Since Mr. Trump re-entered the White House, Mr. Bragg has not brought a major public corruption case. His office has turned to other priorities; some of its most prominent recent prosecutions have involved sex trafficking and wage theft, as well as the murder case against Luigi Mangione.
Mr. Bragg’s spokeswoman pushed back on the suggestion that he has moved away from public corruption cases. She cited a $75,000 bribery indictment against a former Department of Buildings supervisor this year and additional bribery charges against Ms. Lewis-Martin in August.
The first indication of the Justice Department’s new orientation was its abandonment of the Adams case.
In September 2024, federal prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment against Mr. Adams, charging him with soliciting illegal foreign donations, routing them through illegal straw donors, using those donations to exploit the city’s generous campaign matching funds system and accepting bribes from Turkish interests with business before the city. Those bribes were said to include more than $100,000 of free and heavily discounted international travel.
Mr. Adams responded by dismissing the allegations as airline upgrades, and mounting an ultimately successful campaign to curry favor with President Trump. In the end, when Mr. Trump’s Justice Department asked Judge Ho to drop the case,
he was compelled by law to accept the dismissal and acquiesced, even as he argued that the whole episode smelled bad.
“Everything here smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Judge Ho wrote.
Citizens Union’s request comes nearly five months after the conclusion of Mr. Adams’s one-term mayoralty, a tenure marred by numerous federal and state corruption investigations. Although Mr. Adams escaped prosecution, some of his allies have been convicted of crimes, and others remain under indictment.
“The mayor has been clear from the beginning that the allegations brought against him were without merit, which is exactly why the case was dismissed,” Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, said. “Attempts to revive a dismissed federal matter through political pressure campaigns do nothing to help working New Yorkers, reduce crime, build housing or move the city forward.”
Mr. Adams has seemed to move on with his life. Recently, he has reached out to several members of New York’s business community. One of those members said Mr. Adams is pitching construction industry products, including a type of rust-resistant rebar and wallpaper that can heat a room.
Mr. Shapiro said that Mr. Adams’s business interests were in line with his “decades of relationships across business, labor, technology, hospitality, and construction,” and that some of his discussions could “strengthen the city and create jobs.”
Even if state prosecutors gained federal cooperation to build a case against Mr. Adams, bringing the case before a grand jury would be a separate hurdle.
While federal grand juries can hear hearsay testimony, meaning a law enforcement official could testify to all they have been told by witnesses, New York State law does not allow such testimony, said Paul Shechtman, a former federal prosecutor and veteran defense lawyer.
In the federal case of Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, a single F.B.I. agent and a New York police detective were the only ones to testify before the grand jury. But if the indictment had been sought in New York State court, prosecutors would have needed to produce victims and witnesses to testify.
“I’m not sure I would change that rule,” Mr. Shechtman said. “But it makes it much more difficult to get an indictment and much more time-consuming and costly.”
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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