It’s Now Up to the Judge Whether to Drop Charges in Adams Case - NYT
It’s Now Up to the Judge Whether to Drop Charges in Adams Case
Judge Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan has yet to respond to the government’s request to dismiss the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams.
The Manhattan judge overseeing the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams will be in the spotlight this week after a standoff between federal prosecutors and the Justice Department over a directive to drop the charges against the mayor.
The order, issued last Monday by Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, caused a cascade of resignations and days of drama as several prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request asking the judge to dismiss the case. The judge, Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan, must now decide how to respond.
The law gives judges almost no ability to refuse a government request to drop criminal charges. But Mr. Adams’s case may challenge those limits and that precedent.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September on charges of bribery, fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and conspiracy as part of a scheme involving the Turkish government. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have vehemently defended the case and recently hinted at the possibility of additional charges. Judge Ho has denied repeated requests by Mr. Adams, who has pleaded not guilty, to dismiss the case.
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In the motion that Mr. Bove filed on Friday, the government requested that Mr. Adams’s case be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again in the future. The decision to seek dismissal of the case had nothing to do with its strength, Mr. Bove has said. He has argued that the prosecution was politically motivated and was impeding Mr. Adams’s ability to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policies.
As of early Monday morning, Judge Ho had not responded to the government’s filing.
Claims made in a resignation letter last week by the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, might prompt Judge Ho to call a hearing with the parties to ask questions about the government’s stated reasons for the dismissal request.
Here is what we know about the judge and the unusual position he is in:
Who is Judge Ho?
Judge Ho, previously a leading civil rights lawyer, was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2023. He narrowly made it onto the bench after a contentious confirmation process that ended in a 50-to-49 vote by the U.S. Senate.
Before joining the court, he supervised the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights litigation and, according to the group, argued in front of the Supreme Court twice. He also worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Born in San Jose, Calif., in 1977, Judge Ho attended Princeton University and Yale Law School. He clerked in the Southern District of New York, where he now presides, and at the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.
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Mr. Adams’s case is the first high-profile one to be assigned to Judge Ho in his short tenure on the bench.
What factors is he considering?
As Judge Ho makes his decision, allegations set forth by Ms. Sassoon in her resignation letter — particularly of a politically motivated quid pro quo — could factor into his thinking.
Ms. Sassoon, who quickly ascended the ranks of the prestigious and famously independent Southern District, had been appointed just last month by Mr. Trump as the office’s interim leader. In her eight-page resignation letter to the attorney general, she said the government did not have a valid basis to seek the dismissal of the case.
She wrote that she could not “fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office in carrying out the department’s priorities, or credibly represent the government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case.”
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Ms. Sassoon detailed negotiations between a top Trump appointee and Mr. Adams’s lawyers — which largely excluded her team of prosecutors who have been overseeing the case in New York, she said.
At a meeting she attended in Washington with Mr. Bove and Mr. Adams’s lawyers to discuss the possibility of dropping the charges, she said, the mayor’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo,” wherein the mayor would help the Trump administration with immigration enforcement only if the case were dismissed.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” she wrote.
In a footnote, Ms. Sassoon said that Mr. Bove admonished a member of her team for taking notes during the meeting and “directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.”
What will the judge do next?
Judge Ho could decide that the dismissal request was politically motivated and the reasons for it were inadequate, legal experts said.
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But if he does, his decision to deny it would almost certainly be appealed.
Ms. Sassoon makes an argument for denial in her letter. The court has the ability to question if a dismissal request is contrary to the public’s interest and has done so in the past, she wrote, and judges have denied requests to dismiss where both parties have agreed. Judge Ho “appears likely to conduct a searching inquiry in this case,” she said.
“Judge Ho stressed transparency during this case,” she wrote. “And a rigorous inquiry here would be consistent with precedent and practice in this and other districts.”
Amid a growing chorus of calls for Mr. Adams to resign, Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn who is running for mayor, sent a letter to the judge calling on him to reject the dismissal request and appoint a special prosecutor.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York region. More about Hurubie Meko
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