A federal judge permanently rejected the criminal case against the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, weeks after the Trump administration asked prosecutors to suppress corruption charges.
This decision led to the resignation of the main federal prosecutor of Manhattan who accused Adams of having concluded an agreement with the Trump administration to reject his case in exchange for the application of immigration.
Manhattan’s judge rejected the case “with prejudice”, which means that the Ministry of Justice cannot resuscitate accusations against Adams on the basis of the same evidence.
Adams was accused of conspiracy, fraud, solicitation of illegal campaign contributions and corruption. He had denied any reprehensible act.
In an indictment last September, Adams would have accepted gifts totaling more than $ 100,000 (£ 75,000) from Turkish citizens in exchange for favors.
In a decision on Wednesday, the American district judge Dale Ho said that the Ministry of Justice had not opposed a request for Adams requesting the permanent rejection of the case.
Judge HO said that he constantly rejected the case because allowing federal prosecutors to rekindle the case in the future “would create the inevitable perception that the mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to achieve the priorities of the administration’s immigration application, and that he could be considered more for the requests of the federal government than the wishes of his own constituents”.
In February, the acting vice -procurer Emil Bove, ordered New York prosecutors to abandon the case against Adams, arguing that he “restricted” the mayor’s ability to approach “illegal immigration and violent crime” – a key objective of the Trump administration.
But the former Manhattan prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, refused to do so.
She allegedly allegedly allegedly with a letter to the boss of Bove, the Attorney General Pam Bondi, that the mayor’s team had offered “what was equivalent to a counterpart”, saying that ADAMS would be able to help the administration policies “only if the indictment was rejected”.
Sassoon and six other senior justice officials resigned from the controversy, saying that there was no legal justification to reject the Adams affair.
After the decision, Alex Spiro, the lawyer for mayor Adams, said that the case “should never have been brought in the first place”. “From the first day, the mayor maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorks prevailed.”
