Since he took the helm of the Southern District of New York federal prosecutor’s office in 2021, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams has been on the warpath against public corruption.
Most recently, Williams secured an indictment in September against Eric Adams, accusing the New York City mayor of bribery, fraud and campaign finance crimes stemming from a plot to sell political influence to wealthy Turkish government officials starting when he was Brooklyn borough president.
The bombshell case against Adams came on the heels of Williams winning a corruption conviction against another powerful Democrat, New Jersey’s ex-U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez. In addition to prosecuting sitting pols, this year, he has brought corruption charges against high-ranking FDNY chiefs for taking cash to fast-track safety inspections and a historic bribery case against NYCHA employees for cheating residents out of better services.
Questions have arisen about the future of the office’s aggressive pursuit of prosecuting corruption in government — and the case against Adams, in particular — following Donald Trump’s election victory. The president-elect announced Thursday that he plans to install in Williams’ place his former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, whom the U.S. Senate must confirm.
Jay Clayton testifies on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2017.
The incoming president has made no secret about his thoughts on the case against Adams.
“We were persecuted, Eric,” he recently said at a charity dinner attended by the mayor.
A new DOJ
The Republican president-elect stunned many this week, announcing he will seek to install contentious Florida Republican Matt Gaetz as attorney general and his lead lawyers from the hush-money trial, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, as numbers two and three at the Department of Justice. Trump said Bove would serve as his acting deputy AG while Blanche undergoes the Senate confirmation process.
Trump — who faced two criminal indictments filed after his chaotic first term — has vowed revenge against his perceived enemies and to knock down the proverbial walls erected after President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal that established the DOJ’s independence from the White House.
“I will direct a completely overhauled DOJ to investigate every radical out of control prosecutor in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse, enforcement of the law,” Trump said on the campaign trail in February.
If Trump plans to direct prosecutions from the Resolute desk, there is little standing in his way this time.
The July Supreme Court ruling granting the president sweeping protections from criminal prosecutions gave him carte blanche to do so. The decision declared him “absolutely immune” from facing charges related to his discussions with the DOJ and outlined his “exclusive authority over the investigative and prosecutorial functions” of the department.
Besides railing against his own indictments as extensions of a political “witch hunt,” Trump has claimed, without any evidence, that Williams, who did not wish to comment for this story, targeted the mayor unfairly for his criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant crisis.
“I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ for speaking out against open borders,” Trump empathized from the dais at the nationally televised Al Smith charity dinner on Oct. 17 as Adams sat a few tables away.
Will Trump help Adams?
If Trump succeeds at pushing Clayton through the confirmation process, it’s unclear whether he would acquiesce if asked to end the case against the mayor or whether Trump would even bother to get involved in a case against a Democrat in a deep blue city.
Mayor Eric Adams is pictured answering questions during his weekly in Person Press Conference at City Hall Blue Room, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2024. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News)
Whoever the new appointee is at the SDNY, the U.S. attorney’s office would need to offer an explanation to and seek approval from Manhattan federal Judge Dale Ho before getting a dismissal.
Arlo Devlin-Brown, chief of the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s public corruption unit from 2014 to 2016 and an attorney at the Covington law firm, said a Trump nominee might not even be confirmed before Adams’ trial in April. Devlin-Brown said he expected the new U.S. attorney to review Adams’ case as they will all significant cases.
“If Clayton is the U.S. attorney, he has an excellent reputation, and, in my judgment, would be unlikely to squander that in order to do political bidding that he sees as contrary to the interest of justice. I would also expect line prosecutors to leave the office before they would do something that they felt was not being done in the spirit of the fair administration of justice,” Devlin-Brown told the Daily News.
“If the president was inclined to have the charges against Mayor Adams dismissed, the cleanest way for him to do so would be to pardon the mayor, even before any trial starts.”
But if Trump sent word that he wanted the case to go away, Clayton could make that happen. He could also offer Adams a chance to plead out to a reduced charge. Adams has pleaded not guilty.
“There is a process that they would have to go through in dismissing a case after an indictment, but a judge is likely going to rubber stamp any request to drop a prosecution,” former federal prosecutor Duncan Levin said. “It’s basically whatever the U.S. attorney wants to do.”
For months, the Democratic mayor has fueled criticism from members of his own party for refraining from criticizing Trump, with some speculating he’s doing so in hopes the incoming president will help him with his legal troubles. Asked Friday whether he had a reaction to Clayton’s appointment, Adams told reporters:
“No, I don’t.”
City Hall under fire
Besides Adams’ indictment, Trump’s appointee could affect several ongoing corruption investigations that have ensnared key advisers to the mayor.
Since those probes have not produced any criminal charges to date, Clayton or another Trump appointee could wind them down without sign-off from a judge. Trump hasn’t said anything publicly about those probes, and it’s unclear whether he’d seek to disrupt them once back in the White House.
The inquiries, which are unrelated to the Turkey probe that prompted Adams’ indictment, burst into public view on Sept. 4, when more than a half dozen top aides to the mayor — including former NYPD Commissioner Ed Cabán, former First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, former Schools Chancellor David Banks, former Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks and senior City Hall adviser Tim Pearson — had their homes raided and electronics seized by FBI agents. All of those officials have since resigned.
The investigations are scrutinizing whether top Adams administration officials engaged in influence peddling and kickbacks on city contracts, including ones awarded to clients of Terence Banks, a government relations consultant who’s the younger brother of Phil and David Banks, according to sources.
Other Adams associates have similarly been entangled in separate corruption investigations led by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, including the mayor’s chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and Winnie Greco, his former Asian Affairs liaison at City Hall. SDNY investigators also served Lewis-Martin with a subpoena a day after Adams was indicted.
Clayton’s track record
Clayton, an attorney and adviser at high-powered corporate law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, was Trump’s chairman of the SEC from 2017 to 2020. The potential incoming “sheriff of Wall Street” has never worked as a criminal prosecutor in his career and sits on the boards of American Express and Apollo Global Management, one of the world’s largest asset management firms. Clayton could not be reached for comment.
Under Clayton’s leadership, the SEC in 2018 brought securities fraud charges against Elon Musk for misleading tweets he made — before he bought Twitter and changed it to “X” — that caused Tesla’s stock price to jump and messed with the market. The resulting settlement, which did not require Musk to admit wrongdoing, forced him to step down as the chairman of Tesla for three years and required him and Tesla to pay a $20 million fine and other forms of relief.
Musk wasn’t then an ally of Trump, so it’s unclear whether the SEC enforcement action signals that Clayton would be comfortable pursuing Trump allies as targets.
Trump tried to install Clayton at the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office without success in 2020, which led to a dramatic showdown when his former Attorney General Bill Barr sought to oust then-U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, who objected to the nomination based on Clayton’s lack of prosecutorial experience. Berman left when it was clear his deputy, Audrey Strauss, would take over.
In his memoir, Berman said he felt Trump and Barr forced him out to install someone who would do the White House’s bidding.
“I knew Jay Clayton and liked him. He lived in Tribeca, near me, and I had run into him a couple times when we were each out for drinks with people from our offices. He is an extremely talented lawyer but had never been a prosecutor, which is — or should be — a prerequisite for leading SDNY,” Berman wrote.
Levin said he believes Clayton’s primary purpose as U.S. attorney would be to do Trump’s bidding, an assessment he attributed to the attorney’s lack of prosecutorial experience.
“This is a cynical pick that shows [Trump] cares mostly about putting in loyalists who will do what he wants,” he said.
Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer, a Democrat who chairs the Council’s Oversight and Investigation Committee, debated Clayton at the Harvard Club on Oct. 21 as part of a 2024 election forum where she advocated for Vice President Kamala Harris while he pushed for Trump. They also had a two-hour dinner together afterward.
“From my limited experience debating him, the guy is really smart. He seems like the guy who’s a quick study,” Brewer said.
At the same time, Brewer shared concerns about Clayton not having relevant experience to head the premiere prosecutor’s office.
“In terms of a lack of skill set, it’s concerning,” she said.
“He’s definitely a loyalist,” Brewer continued. “And even if he’s the type of person who could probably pick it up, he might pick up ways of prosecuting cases in ways I wouldn’t.”
