What happened
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove Monday ordered federal prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in part so he could “devote full attention and resources” to aiding President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants.
Trump separately issued a full pardon to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D), five years after he commuted his 14-year corruption sentence, and ordered the Justice Department to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a 1977 law that prohibits Americans from bribing foreign officials and companies, saying it hampered U.S. businesses.
Who said what
Bove said in a letter to the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan that he was ordering the case against Adams dismissed without prejudice, meaning the charges could be resurrected. He said not to investigate Adams further until after November’s mayoral election, and underscored that the Justice Department was ordering the dismissal “without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.”
Prosecutors in the Manhattan office had said just weeks ago they uncovered “additional criminal conduct” by Adams, indicating they were expanding the case. A federal law enforcement official told NBC News that Bove’s order was “horrific” and “just transparent corruption.”
In three weeks, Trump has “moved with brazen haste to dismantle the federal government’s public integrity guardrails” in a show of “stop-me-if-you-dare defiance by a president who the first time around felt hemmed in by watchdogs, lawyers and judges tasked with affirming good government and fair play,” The Associated Press said. Monday he fired the heads of the Office of Government Ethics and the Office of Special Counsel, which processes whistleblower complaints, following a legally dubious “late-night purge of more than a dozen inspectors general.”
What next?
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan would have to petition for dismissal before the federal judge scheduled to hear the Adams case in April. Adams’ “reelection chances may receive a boost” from the dismissal, The New York Times said, but recent polls suggest he was “favored by around 10% of respondents” and he already has several challengers in the Democratic primary.