US justice department orders prosecutors drop New York mayor’s corruption case

The US justice department has ordered prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams.

It argued in a remarkable departure from long-standing norms that the case was interfering with the mayor’s ability to aid the president’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

In a two-page memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove told prosecutors in New York that they were “directed to dismiss” the bribery charges against Mr Adams immediately.

“The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime,” Mr Bove wrote.

The memo also ordered prosecutors in New York not to take “additional investigative steps” against the Democrat until after November’s mayoral election, though it left open the possibility that charges could be refiled after that following a review.

The intervention and reasoning — that a powerful defendant could be too occupied with official duties to face accountability for alleged crimes — marked an extraordinary deviation from long-standing US justice department norms.

Public officials at the highest level of government are routinely investigated by the justice department, including President Donald Trump during his first term, without prosecutors advancing a claim that they should be let off the hook to attend to government service.

A lawyer for Mr Adams, Alex Spiro, said the justice department’s order had vindicated the mayor’s claim of innocence.

“Now, thankfully, the mayor and New York can put this unfortunate and misguided prosecution behind them,” said Mr Spiro, who has also represented Elon Musk.

A spokesperson for the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, Danielle Sassoon, declined to comment.

The memo follows months of speculation that Mr Trump would take steps to end the case against Mr Adams, who was charged in September with accepting bribes of free or discounted travel and illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals seeking to buy his influence.

Mr Adams, a Democrat elected on a centrist platform, has moved noticeably right following his indictment, rankling some within his own party.

Rather than restricting cooperation with immigration and customs enforcement, as Mr Adams once promised, he has expressed a willingness to roll back the city’s so-called sanctuary policies and pledged not to publicly criticise a president whose policies he once described as “abusive”.

In recent weeks, he implied that Mr Trump’s agenda would be better for New York than former president Joe Biden’s.

Several of the mayor’s opponents in the Democratic mayoral primary claimed on Monday that Mr Adams had agreed to do Trump’s bidding because he hoped for leniency.

“Instead of standing up for New Yorkers, Adams is standing up for precisely one person,” said Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller and a mayoral challenger.

Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblymember who is also running for mayor, called for an investigation into whether Mr Adams “cut any kind of deal with the Trump administration that involves breaking city law”.

He hinted at the possibility of a pardon in December, telling reporters that the mayor had been “treated pretty unfairly”.

He had also claimed, without offering evidence, that Mr Adams was being persecuted for criticising former president Joe Biden’s policies on immigration.

“I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DOJ, for speaking out against open borders,” Mr Trump said in October at a Manhattan event attended by Mr Adams.

“We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric.”

The prosecutors in New York had noted that the investigation into Mr Adams began before he began feuding with Mr Biden over migrant funding.

Still, Mr Bove, in his memo, echoed some of Mr Trump’s and Mr Adams’ claims about politicisation.

“It cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticised the prior administration’s immigration policies before the charges were filed.”

The criminal case against Mr Adams involves allegations that he accepted illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks worth more than 100,000 dollars — including expensive flight upgrades, luxury hotel stays and even a trip to a bathhouse — while serving in his previous job as Brooklyn borough president.

The indictment said a Turkish official who helped facilitate the trips then leaned on Mr Adams for favours, at one point asking him to lobby the Fire Department to allow a newly constructed, 36-story diplomatic building to open in time for a planned visit by Turkey’s president.

As recently as January 6, prosecutors had indicated their investigation remained active, writing in court papers that they continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams”.

In December, Mr Adams’ chief adviser and closest confidant, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, was indicted by a state prosecutor — the Manhattan district attorney — on charges that she and her son accepted 100,000 dollars in bribes related to real estate construction projects.