Eric Adams just had his least contentious court hearing yet

Appearing before a judge who will decide the fate of the criminal corruption charges against him, Adams was all smiles on Wednesday. 

There’s good reason for that – the U.S. Department of Justice stepped into the case to request the charges against Adams be dismissed last week. Adams even had some supporters in attendance, like Rev. Rubén Díaz Sr., the former state senator who chanted “four more years” as Adams entered the courthouse. 

After months of the prosecution and defense in USA v. Adams arguing opposing motions before Judge Dale Ho, attorneys on both sides of the case appeared at the hearing on Wednesday with a shared goal: to have the charges against Adams dismissed without prejudice. That means that the charges could be brought again – a fact that acting deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, an ally of President Donald Trump, affirmed in court. 

Bove was the sole attorney representing the DOJ, at a table previously occupied by assistant U.S. attorneys in Manhattan, who up until recently led the prosecution against Adams. Among the SDNY attorneys who resigned over the DOJ’s order to request the dismissal of the case is Hagen Scotten, formerly the lead prosecutor. In the end, Bove himself, along with two DOJ attorneys, signed the motion to dismiss. 

But at the same time that Adams may be let off on a trial that was slated to start in April, his political future is in freefall – in large part due to his alignment with the Trump administration. Calling him a “MAGA mayor,” plenty of protesters lined the steps to the courthouse on Wednesday too. Still, Adams didn’t have the countenance of a man whose political fate was being discussed behind closed doors by Gov. Kathy Hochul and other city leaders this week. At one point, after the judge notified him that he could confer with his attorney at any time, Adams made an attempt at a lighthearted joke. “I appreciate that because I failed my law class,” he said. 

Two overflow courtrooms were opened up at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse to accommodate both members of the press and public, including Díaz Sr.

Questioned by the judge about the rationale for dismissal, Bove reinforced the arguments laid out in the motion that the prosecution had the appearance of impropriety and that the indictment harmed Adams’ ability to work with the federal government on issues of national security and immigration enforcement. 

Asked whether the DOJ was committing to stopping any additional investigative steps into Adams, Bove said no. In his initial memo to Manhattan prosecutors directing them to request the charges be dismissed, however, Bove said that there should be “no further targeting of Mayor Adams or additional investigative steps” until a review was completed after the November mayoral election.

In separate amicus motions, former U.S. attorneys called the unfolding of events in the case “unprecedented” and a good government group called it “unfortunate.”

But in the court hearing, Bove argued that his motion to dismiss those same charges is “standard.” “This is a standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion,” he said. There was nothing “exotic” about the situation, Bove said, except for the number of people in the court room – an apparent reference to the large media and public attention the case has attracted.

Bove filed the motion to dismiss criminal corruption charges against Adams last week. The charges, to which Adams has pleaded not guilty, were filed in a five-count indictment from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York in September. 

Bove initially directed the acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon to request that the charges be dismissed, but she refused and resigned. On her way out, Sassoon alleged in an internal memo that Adams’ defense team proposed “what amounted to a quid pro quo” that suggested that Adams could help with the Trump Department of Justice’s enforcement priorities if the case were dropped. Adams and his defense team have denied that. Both Bove and Adams’ defense attorney Alex Spiro said in court on Wednesday that there was no quid pro quo. Bove said that even if there was a quid pro quo, however, he didn’t think it would affect the motion.