Eric Adams Federal Corruption Case (24 CR 556)

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    2 Democrats Begin Investigation of Move to Drop Adams Charges

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    In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, accused the Justice Department of a coverup.Two top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have begun an investigation into the Justice Department’s request to drop federal criminal charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.They accused the department of covering up a quid pro quo agreement between the Trump administration and the mayor.In a letter on Sunday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, cited an account provided by Danielle Sassoon, who resigned as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan over the department’s request. They said her resignation letter indicated that the administration may have agreed to “a blatant and illegal quid pro quo” with Mr. Adams: It would seek to have the case dropped, and Mr. Adams would assist in carrying out the administration’s immigration policy.“Not only did the Department of Justice attempt to pressure career prosecutors into carrying out this illegal quid pro quo; it appears that Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was personally engaged in a cover-up by destroying evidence and retaliating against career prosecutors who refused to follow his illegal and unethical orders,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter.They added, “We write to demand that you immediately put an end to the cover-up and retaliation and provide documents and information about these disturbing accounts to Congress.”Ms. Sassoon was one of seven federal prosecutors who resigned over the department’s move to drop the corruption charges against Mr. Adams. A federal judge delayed a ruling on the request last month.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Has the Same Idea in Mind for Ukraine and the Department of Justice

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      I grew up a Reagan Republican in the middle of the Cold War, and I never thought I’d see the day when the president of the United States became the world’s most prominent and effective Russian propagandist.Yet that’s exactly what happened last week, when President Trump began a diplomatic offensive against the nation of Ukraine and the person of President Volodymyr Zelensky.This month, the administration couldn’t seem to get its message straight. First it seemed to want to offer unilateral concessions to the Russian government — including by taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table and recognizing Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine — only to walk back the concessions days (or hours) later.The cumulative effect was confusing. What was the administration’s position on Ukraine? Last week, however, the words and actions of the administration left us with no doubt — the United States is taking Russia’s side in the conflict.What other conclusion should we draw when Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, begins peace negotiations with Russia without Ukraine or any of our NATO allies at the table, dangling “historic economic and investment opportunities” for Russia if the conflict ends?What other conclusion should we draw when Trump demands ruinous economic concessions from Ukraine to compensate America for its prior aid? He’s demanding a higher share of gross domestic product from Ukraine than the victorious Allies demanded from Germany after World War I.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Dale Ho Faces Demands to Continue Eric Adams’s Prosecution

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      As Judge Dale E. Ho considers the Justice Department’s request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor, former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.Judge Dale E. Ho, who is overseeing the foundering corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, is facing a storm of demands that he look deeply into the federal government’s reasons for seeking to drop the prosecution.On Monday night, three former U.S. attorneys from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut filed a brief asking the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case was in the public interest or merely a pretext for securing the mayor’s cooperation with the administration’s anti-immigration policies.Earlier Monday, Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group, filed a letter with the judge asking that he deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case, which the group called part of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain.” The organization also asked the judge to consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the case in court.And the New York City Bar Association, which has more than 20,000 lawyers as members, said Monday that the order by a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, to Danielle R. Sassoon, who was the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to dismiss the case “cuts to the heart of the rule of law.” The organization called for a “searching inquiry” into facts of what happened.The legal and political crisis encompasses both New York’s City Hall and the U.S. Department of Justice, calling into question Mr. Adams’s future as well as the independence and probity of federal prosecutions.Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April. But last week, Mr. Bove caused a cascade of resignations — including Ms. Sassoon’s — as prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply with his order. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request that Judge Ho will now consider.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the Justice Dept. Helped Sink Its Own Case Against Eric Adams

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      President Trump had just taken office when lawyers for Mayor Eric Adams of New York went to the White House with an extraordinary request: They formally asked in a letter that the new president pardon the mayor in a federal corruption case that had yet to go to trial.Just a week later, one of Mr. Trump’s top political appointees at the Justice Department called Mr. Adams’s lawyer, saying he wanted to talk about potentially dismissing the case.What followed was a rapid series of exchanges between the lawyers and Mr. Trump’s administration that exploded this week into a confrontation between top Justice Department officials in Washington and New York prosecutors.On Monday, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department sent a memo ordering prosecutors to dismiss the charges against the mayor. By Thursday, the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned in protest over what she described as a quid pro quo between the Trump administration and the mayor of New York City. Five officials overseeing the Justice Department’s public integrity unit in Washington stepped down soon after.The conflagration originated in the back-and-forth between Mr. Adams’s lawyers, Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, and the Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, exchanges which have not been previously reported.The series of events — in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client — represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Curtails Anti-Corruption Efforts, as Aides Seek End to Eric Adams Case

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      Two nearly simultaneous moves by the Trump administration on Monday signaled a new and far more transactional approach to the Justice Department’s handling of corruption cases.In the evening, President Trump signed an executive order halting investigations and prosecutions of corporate corruption in foreign countries, arguing such cases hurt the United States’ competitive edge. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” he said of his decision to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.Around the same time, a top Justice Department official directed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop bribery charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York. The stated justification for the demand had nothing to do with the evidence in the case and focused instead on politics.The actions on Monday stunned current and former prosecutors and investigators who said the department was abandoning a tradition of holding public officials, corporate executives and others accountable for corruption in favor of an approach built on political or economic expedience.That same day, Mr. Trump pardoned Rod R. Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois who was convicted in 2011 of essentially trying to sell a Senate seat that was vacated by President Barack Obama. Mr. Trump had previously commuted Mr. Blagojevich’s sentence.Trump administration officials have also ordered the shutdown of an initiative to seize assets owned by foreign kleptocrats, dialed back scrutiny of foreign influence efforts aimed at the United States and replaced the top career Justice Department official handling corruption cases.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who’s Running for NYC Mayor in 2025?

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      The 2025 New York City mayor’s race is unusually volatile and will have major consequences for the nation’s largest city. As a Democratic incumbent seeking a second term, Mayor Eric Adams would not typically face a serious primary challenge and would be heavily favored in the general election. But this year is different. Mr. Adams […] More

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      Adams’s Lawyer Claims Vindication. The Reality Is More Complicated.

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      A defense lawyer for Mayor Eric Adams, Alex Spiro, celebrated the Justice Department’s push to drop federal corruption charges against the mayor on Monday, saying that the government’s case had relied on “fanfare and sensational claims” but little evidence.But such statements were at odds with the reasoning given by the Justice Department official who ordered the dismissal. That official, Emil Bove, wrote that the decision had been made “without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.” Instead, he said, it was driven by the indictment’s proximity to the upcoming mayoral election and what he said was its interference with Mr. Adams’s ability to aid in Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.The assertions of the mayor’s innocence also conflicted with evidence that federal prosecutors in Manhattan described when they indicted him last September, and in filings since. They had detailed luxury travel arrangements worth more than $100,000 — to India, France, China, Ghana and elsewhere — they said Mr. Adams had accepted, primarily from Turkish Airlines, in exchange for taking official action.Mr. Adams, a Democrat who is running for re-election, was indicted on five counts of bribery conspiracy, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Prosecutors accused him of helping fast-track the approval of a new high-rise Turkish Consulate in Manhattan despite safety concerns, in exchange for unlawful donations and free and heavily discounted luxury travel.Prosecutors quoted text messages about these dealings involving an Adams aide who had helped to arrange that travel and was cooperating with the investigation. And they cited Mr. Adams’s personal communications with city Fire Department officials who they said he had pressured to sign off on the consulate building, and then with a Turkish official who had helped arrange for the gifts of his luxury travel.Prosecutors who brought the charges against Mr. Adams said last month that they had continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct” by the mayor.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesMr. Adams forwarded the Turkish consul general, who had helped arrange for his travel, a note from the city’s fire commissioner: “Letter being drafted now. Everything should be good to go Monday morning,” it said.“You are a true friend of Turkey,” the official responded.The indictment also cited numerous interactions that Mr. Adams or his aides had with foreign businesspeople while seeking to collect illegal foreign contributions for his campaign as part of what prosecutors said was a straw donor scheme that enabled him to defraud the city’s program for public matching funds.In recent weeks, prosecutors said in a court filing that they had gathered additional evidence of Mr. Adams’s criminality. More

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      Dropping Charges Against Adams Wouldn’t Affect Case Against Ingrid Lewis-Martin

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      The criminal case against Mayor Eric Adams’s former chief adviser, who is charged with participating in a long-running bribery and money-laundering scheme, will proceed despite a request by the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Mr. Adams.The case against the adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, and her son, Glenn Martin II, was brought by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, who accused the two of intervening with city regulators on behalf of two businessmen in exchange for $100,000 in bribes.Mr. Trump has no authority to intervene in the case against Ms. Lewis-Martin and Mr. Martin, which was brought in state criminal court in December. The president’s jurisdiction is limited to federal cases, like the one against Mr. Adams.Elizabeth Glazer, a former federal prosecutor who led the mayor’s office of criminal justice under Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, said it was “worth considering whether or not Bragg may have charges that he may be thinking of bringing” against Mr. Adams.In the case involving Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son, the indictment against them says, the businessmen, Mayank Dwivedi and Raizada Vaid, were seeking help pushing construction projects through the city’s Buildings Department.Ms. Lewis-Martin and Mr. Martin received the bribes in the form of checks that Mr. Martin cashed and used to buy a Porsche, according to prosecutors. Ms. Lewis-Martin, the indictment says, used her official position to “illegally influence Department of Buildings and other city decisions” in exchange for the cash and other benefits for herself and her son.Both are scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. More