A senior Justice Department official suggested Wednesday that President Trump’s administration is justified in putting aside allegations of corruption against a public official if the official cooperates with the president’s political agenda.
The Justice Department 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 Manhattan 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.
Even the suggestion that the president can decide who should be immune from prosecution based on political or policy considerations would seem to set an extraordinary precedent.
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 decision not to rule will prolong 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.
The hearing was the latest act in a drama that has caused political and legal upheavals in New York, prompting several of Mr. Adams’s campaign opponents to call for his resignation and increasing the pressure on Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has the power to remove the mayor from office.
Last week, Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for President Trump, ordered Manhattan prosecutors who brought the case against the mayor to seek its dismissal. Mr. Bove said explicitly that the order was not based on the strength of the case but, among other things, the fact that it was hindering Mr. Adams’s cooperation on immigration.
His order prompted the resignations at the Justice Department. 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, though there was no indication whether Judge Ho accepted that argument.
In a statement after the hearing, Mr. Bove said that his appearance 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.”
His justification for the dismissal contradicts the mayor’s own statements. Mr. Adams has insisted that the indictment has not been a distraction from running the 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. Adams appeared calm throughout the hearing, sitting between Mr. Spiro and another of his lawyers, William A. Burck. In response to questions from the judge, the mayor said he had agreed to the dismissal of the charges against him “without prejudice” — meaning that the Justice Department could refile them.
“I have not committed a crime and I don’t see them bringing it back,” Mr. Adams said. “I’m not afraid of that.”
At one point the judge encouraged the mayor to consult with his lawyers if he was unsure how to answer a question.
“I appreciate that” Adams said, adding: “I failed my law class.”
The only person who seemed to become frustrated during the hearing was Mr. Spiro. When Judge Ho asked him about a legal deadline related to the case, Mr. Spiro did not answer directly. Instead, he 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 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.
At one point, the judge, thanking the parties for their patience and time answering his questions, remarked, “This is 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.
In court, Mr. Bove held firmly to the argument that he made to Manhattan prosecutors last week. The request to stop the case ahead of a scheduled April trial was “a standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” he 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 told Judge Ho that the Adams prosecution had “appearances of impropriety” and represented an abuse of the criminal justice system, though he did not substantiate those comments. He has argued that the corruption charges were brought to punish the mayor for his stance on immigration. Mr. Adams has pleaded not guilty.
As Wednesday’s hearing came to an end, Judge Ho said it was not in anyone’s interest for “this to drag on.”
“But to exercise my discretion properly,” he said, “I’m not going to shoot from the hip right here on the bench.”
He said he wanted to take the time necessary to consider everything before him, and to “make a reasoned decision that is mindful of my role, which I understand here is quite narrow.”
After the hearing, Mr. Adams gave an interview on NY1. “Was there some form of quid pro quo?” he said, adding: “Was I forced into anything? Under oath, I clearly stated I was not.”
The hearing offered 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 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.
Wesley Parnell, Kate Christobek, Devlin Barrett, Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.
Read the full article here
