The Corrupt Pressure Campaign to Get SDNY to Drop Its Case Against Mayor Eric Adams

By Mimi Rocah and Jennifer Rodgers

The New York Times reports that Trump senior DOJ officials have been meeting with and talking with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York about dropping their criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. As a former longtime prosecutor at the SDNY who served under at least five U.S. Attorneys and several Attorneys General of both Republican and Democratic Administrations, this is extremely alarming.

Adams was charged in September 2024 with a variety of crimes, including bribery conspiracy, fraud, and campaign finance violations. After charges were filed, as is typical, prosecutors at SDNY continued to investigate, including conducting interviews and searches. Recent reporting indicates that prosecutors have gone back into the grand jury to present additional evidence. This suggests that SDNY prosecutors, at the time the Oval Office changed hands just two weeks ago, strongly stood behind their case and planned to vigorously pursue and possibly even expand it with additional charges and/or additional defendants.

So, why would Trump DOJ officials push for SDNY to drop the charges, and why now?

The timing of these discussions is entirely suspect. While it is not uncommon for DOJ leadership to exercise some degree of oversight of a high-profile case charged by a U.S. Attorney’s office—like corruption charges against the mayor of New York City—there is nothing imminent in the case that requires the new administration to do that now. If there actually is good reason for a careful, thorough review of the Eric Adams case, which, of course, is theoretically possible, why wouldn’t that happen after the presumptive new U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, Jay Clayton, the presumptive Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and her presumptive Deputy, Todd Blanche (an SDNY alum) are in place? After all, these nominees are the people the President has chosen to make exactly these kinds of very consequential, significant decisions, ostensibly because their experience and judgment makes them best suited to the task. The fact that this apparent pressure campaign by DOJ against SDNY is happening now, without these leaders in place, strongly suggests that the case is not being reviewed based on its merits.

In fact, there are lots of red flags here suggesting that DOJ is improperly trying to get SDNY to drop the case against Adams. First, Adams has openly been courting favor with Trump since the latter won the election — cutting back his criticism, visiting the president near Mar-a-Lago, and skipping NYC MLK Day events in order to attend the inauguration. And it seems more than coincidental that there is a throughline from Adams’s attorney Alex Spiro (also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk), through Musk, to President Trump.

Second, there are signs of a possible under-the-table deal between President Trump and Mayor Adams whereby Adams cooperates with Trump’s immigration crackdown in New York City, and possibly other matters, in exchange for Trump forcing the dismissal of his charges. Adams’s attorney all but admitted as much, saying Adams “would not be inclined to cooperate with the President’s immigration crackdown if he remained under indictment.” (While this may or may not rise to the level of criminal bribery itself, it gives new meaning to the word “shady” and certainly should not form the basis for the dismissal of an otherwise meritorious criminal corruption case).

In just 10 days, President Trump has completely obliterated the independence from the White House that the Justice Department, for good reason, so carefully tended over decades. He has caused the abrupt firing of numerous career prosecutors because of his personal animus against them and because they purportedly would not carry out the President's “agenda.” He installed a “Stop the Steal” partisan, Ed Martin, a man with no prosecutorial experience, as the Acting U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. (Martin then promptly announced an internal investigation into the charging of many of the cases against the January 6 riot defendants.) Trump fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on the January 6th cases and is threatening to do the same for FBI agents. He caused numerous other career DOJ officials to be reassigned or to resign. All of this has led to a high level of uncertainty and concern that permeates the Justice Department, according to reports.

And now the rot may be burrowing deeper into the SDNY, an institution whose independent decision-making has been largely honored — albeit sometimes grudgingly — by DOJ’s leaders for decades. Trump’s demolition crew appears to want more than to merely protect Adams from prosecution for his crimes. After all, Trump could easily exercise his essentially unlimited pardon power in Adams’ favor, or have the Attorney General seek a dismissal directly. If they instead force SDNY to dismiss a righteous case—one that is apolitical and supported by strong evidence—it would reveal that Trump’s DOJ appointees not only lack integrity, but are prepared to swing a wrecking ball at the integrity of all DOJ prosecutors in the process. Adams will almost certainly claim vindication and/or propose that the case never should have been brought in the first place. That has happened already with other political friends of Trump, following in his grand, ignoble tradition. So let’s be clear: if the SDNY is forced to drop this case, it will be an irrefutable signal that the days of purely merit-based prosecutions in the federal system are over, at least for those cases in which President Trump or Elon Musk has a personal or transactional interest.