By now, you’ve heard that New York City Mayor Eric Adams (a Democrat) was indicted by a federal grand jury on five charges of corruption related to taking bribes from foreign business people and at least one Turkish government official. In return, he provided favors such as allowing a Turkish consular building – a 36 story skyscraper – to open even though it was failing fire inspections at the time. This was important for the Turkish government as they wanted the building open in time for a high-profile visit by the president of Turkey (https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/new-york-mayor-eric…/)
He accomplished this by telling the official in charge of fire inspections that he would lose his job if he did not approve the building for opening.
You can read all about the indictment here.
On February 10th, however, Emil Bove, the Acting United States Attorney General under Trump, instructed the federal prosecutors on the case to drop all charges “without prejudice” (“without prejudice” means that the prosecutors can re-file the charges at a later time; we’ll see why that’s important later). In his memo, Bove stated that the decision was made “…without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based…” – admitting that the reason for dropping the charges is NOT because there is some reason to believe that Adams is not guilty.
You can read Bove’s memo here.
Subsequently, no less than seven federal prosecutors resigned rather than drop the charges. Many wrote public memoranda explaining that they could not possibly go along with Bove’s plan to let Adams off the hook for his crimes. One of them by the name of Hagen Scotten wrote, “Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
Bove then summoned the two dozen remaining attorneys into a room and ordered them to figure out who was going to dismiss the charges. He explained that attorneys who elected not to dismiss the charges would be fired while those who did might be promoted. He then left the attorneys alone to figure out who would do the job. Apparently the initial plan was for the entire office to resign en masse but eventually a senior prosecutor by the name of Edward Sullivan agreed to dismiss the charges in order to save the jobs of his colleagues. He, Bove, and Toni Bacon, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division signed the motion to dismiss the charges. The New York Times has the full story here and Reuters has additional details.
Bove has then gone on to inform Danielle Sassoon, the first of the prosecutors to resign, that the other prosecutors who worked on the case against Adams would be put on administrative leave and that all of them would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department. (The New York Times)
Now you might be curious as to why Scotten had written “…our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials in this way…” The reason is that because Bove has dismissed the charges “without prejudice”, he is free to re-instate the charges at any time… if, for example, Adams does not do exactly what he is instructed to do by Trump. Indeed, the same day as the federal prosecutors were resigning, Adams met with Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, for a closed door meeting. During the meeting, Adams agreed to allow federal immigration officials to operate at the Riker’s Island jail and Homan explained, “I came to New York City and I wasn’t going to leave with nothing”. He went on to note that Adams’ cooperation was expected – “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?” NBC News.
And it should not escape the thoughtful reader’s attention that Trump himself owns a number of properties in New York City, properties that could benefit financially from a Mayor who is under Trump’s thumb.