Do not dismiss Eric Adams case

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is groveling before President Donald Trump in hopes of making the serious federal corruption case against him disappear. So far, Trump is stringing along the mayor, a prop in the president’s destructive bid to bend national law enforcement to his purposes.

Recently, Adams met with Trump in Florida, then skipped speaking engagements on Martin Luther King Day to attend his inauguration. Last week, Adams’ defense attorney met in Washington with top Department of Justice officials to argue that the case should be dropped, just days after those officials reportedly discussed the future of the case with the Manhattan prosecutors in charge including Danielle Sassoon, acting head of the office. Just weeks earlier, Sassoon submitted a letter to a federal judge saying there was “concrete evidence” of crimes committed by Adams.

The mayor was charged in September with fraud and bribery for taking illegal campaign contributions and favors from the Turkish government in exchange for allowing the country’s Manhattan consulate to open without required safety certifications. His trial on the first indictment — prosecutors have said a second is likely — is scheduled for April. In January, Erden Arkan, businessman and player in the city’s Turkish community, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for organizing illegal donations to Adams’ reelection campaign.

Yet, Trump has said Adams is being treated “pretty unfairly” and that he might pardon him, a way to give the mayor a get-out-of-jail card that isn’t such a stab at the heart of DOJ autonomy. But that, too, would deliver a destructive message: Justice in America is now transactional. Adams would remain in office until the end of 2025, unless he is reelected this fall, presumably to do what the White House wants on immigration and other issues. 

In return, Trump can use Adams to argue that even a Black Democrat was a victim of a weaponized DOJ under former President Joe Biden, along with the “persecuted” Jan. 6 rioters Trump let out of prison and former GOP Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, whose prosecution for making false statements to FBI investigators probing an illegal foreign contribution of $30,000 to his reelection campaign was recently dropped. Trump had called it a witch hunt.

The Supreme Court has already made it close to impossible to convict elected officials of misconduct unless there is a clear quid pro quo, arguing that there is a risk of criminalizing politics. That is a high bar for prosecutors. Adams claims he has a good defense. Trump should let the criminal justice process play out. If Adams is convicted, Trump can pardon him if there’s a convincing case that the motive of prosecutors was to drive Adams from office.

However, if Trump insists the Justice Department let Adams off the hook now, that could hinder many efforts to hold self-dealing public officials accountable. Prosecutors will be intimidated. And corrupt officials will have a license to run amok because structural rot will have corrupted the nation’s justice system.