Manhattan Federal Judge Dale Ho has ordered lawyers for Mayor Eric Adams and the Justice Department to appear before him Wednesday to root out the motivations behind an effort to get Adams off the hook in his criminal corruption case — though whether the judge can actually keep the case alive uncertain, according to legal experts who spoke to the Daily News.
The parties are slated to appear in court at 2 p.m. to explain the circumstances of the DOJ’s unusual motion to dismiss the case — while leaving it open to being revived — and the strings attached.
The dismissal motion, filed Friday by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove and two Washington D.C. prosecutors who risked being fired if they didn’t sign on to it, reasoned that the case interfered with Adams’ mayoral campaign, that Adams needed to assist the Trump administration’s hardline deportation agenda unimpeded as an accused felon, and lobbed accusations of improper conduct at former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.
If Ho disagrees with the DOJ’s reasons for dropping the historic prosecution, experts said his options for pushing back appear limited, with virtually no playbook for insisting a case move forward the prosecution does not wish to pursue.
“There’s not a real playbook for Judge Ho either as to how to treat a filing like this because again they do happen so rarely. However, fundamentally, there’s a separation of powers issue and if the executive branch, which is the prosecution, decides they don’t want to prosecute a case, the general view is it’s not up to the judicial branch to step in and impose it own judgment about what the executive branch should be doing,” Arlo Devlin-Brown, the former chief of the SDNY’s public corruption unit, said in a recent interview with The News.
“He certainly has within his power the ability to hold a hearing to have the prosecution explain their rationale and hold their feet to the fire a little bit.”
Several former U.S. attorneys have urged Ho to investigate the terms of the deal. On Monday, Nathaniel Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor representing the nonpartisan advocacy group Common Cause, suggested that the judge appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case independently.
Veteran New York City attorney Ron Kuby said the request was more than a longshot.
“The judge has no power to appoint a special prosecutor. Zero,” Kuby said.
The decision to drop the case by those leading the federal government’s law enforcement arm led to multiple resignations, including former interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who said the terms of the dismissal Adams has agreed to amounted to a “quid pro quo” between the mayor and the Trump administration, requiring the mayor get on board with Trump’s agenda in exchange for dodging charges. Adams’ lawyers have denied the accusation.
It’s unclear how Wednesday’s hearing, which Adams is expected to attend, will play out and who the judge may put on the stand.
The case against Adams, scheduled for trial in April, accuses him of selling off his political influence to wealthy foreign businessmen, some tied to the Turkish government, starting almost a decade ago. He’s further accused of soliciting and accepting illegal campaign contributions from his foreign benefactors that were funneled through U.S. citizens and maximized with taxpayer dollars through the city’s public matching funds program. He’s pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment.
Sassoon and the public corruption prosecutors who had been handling the Adams case were gearing up to add additional charges after uncovering more criminality, including alleged efforts by Adams to cover up his crimes from the FBI, according to court filings. Adams’ legal team has denied those accusations.
The line prosecutors withdrew from the case at the same time the dismissal motion was filed, with one of the lead prosecutors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, quitting a day after Sassoon. In his resignation letter, he told Bove he’d need to find a “fool” or “coward” to ask Ho to dismiss the case.
Attorneys for Adams did not respond to requests for comment.
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