A federal judge on Wednesday permanently dismissed the criminal case against Mayor Eric Adams. The ruling ends a saga that cratered the political career of New York’s mayor and left him indebted to the sitting president, but leaves unsettled the question of whether Adams was guilty of the yearslong corruption scheme in which he was accused of participating.
District Court Judge Dale Ho wrote that he was dismissing Adams’ case with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought again, since he cannot force the Justice Department to prosecute a case if it does not want to. But he emphasized that his ruling “is not about whether Mayor Adams is innocent or guilty,” and criticized President Donald Trump’s administration for its attempt to drop the case with conditions.
“DOJ does not seek to end this case once and for all. Rather, its request, if granted, would leave Mayor Adams under the specter of reindictment at essentially any time, and for essentially any reason,” Ho wrote in a 78-page ruling.
Ho acknowledged the uproar inside and out of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department about its decision to discontinue Adams’ case, and said some may find the dismissal “troubling.” But he said he has no authority to “order DOJ to continue the prosecution.”
Still, the judge condemned the Trump DOJ for questioning the motives of the Manhattan prosecutors who brought the case, writing that “there is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives.”
And Ho gave little credence to DOJ’s claim that Adams’ criminal case was preventing him from cooperating with the Trump administration’s mass-deportation agenda — noting that Adams has generally embraced the White House’s immigration aims while the dismissal motion was pending.
“Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Ho said.
Adams’ attorney Alex Spiro said in a statement Wednesday that “The case against Eric Adams should have never been brought in the first place — and finally today that case is gone forever.”
“From Day 1, the mayor has maintained his innocence and now justice for Eric Adams and New Yorkers has prevailed,” Spiro said.
Ho’s decision appeared all but inevitable since Trump’s Justice Department moved to toss Adams’ case in February. Although the Trump DOJ wanted to leave open the possibility of reinstating the charges, a court-appointed lawyer advised Ho to instead dismiss the case with prejudice, to avoid the already widespread perception that Adams had become beholden to the president.
The ruling is a major but hollow victory for Adams, who has maintained his innocence and called the case politically motivated. He no longer faces the prospect of a prison term as long as 45 years and is free to run a more open re-election campaign.
But his September indictment clouded his political future, two years after he swept into office as the city’s second Black mayor with a strong electoral mandate and powerful allegiances that seemed to bode well for his mayoralty. His standing grew even more perilous earlier this year when Trump officials moved to dismiss his case — a superficially positive development for Adams that nonetheless tanked his support in the heavily Democratic city. It sparked a governing crisis in mid-March when his four top deputies resigned in protest over his coziness with Trump.
Adams has said he is running for re-election as a Democrat but has also hinted that he might run as an independent in the November general election if he loses the June 24 Democratic primary. His prospects look dim in either contest, with his approval rating at a dismal 20% as of early March.
The indictment, brought by Manhattan federal prosecutors, charged Adams with accepting luxury travel and illicit campaign donations from Turkish nationals and government officials, as part of an influence scheme that began soon after he became Brooklyn borough president in 2014.
Adams accepted some $100,000 in airline tickets and hotel stays, took campaign money from foreign nationals and solicited illegal “straw” donations in other people’s names from the would-be influencers, prosecutors said. In exchange, Adams was accused of doing favors — including getting the city’s Fire Department to issue a certificate of occupancy for Turkey’s new 36-story Midtown consulate in 2021, despite safety concerns.
Adams pleaded not guilty and implied that the case had been brought by President Joe Biden as retribution for his criticism of the administration’s immigration policy — even though the Manhattan-based Southern District of New York began its investigation months before the city’s migrant crisis began around 2022.
The investigation into Adams continued even after his September indictment. In February, as the case against him collapsed following the Trump administration’s intervention, interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon disclosed in a letter to Washington prosecutors that her office had been preparing a superseding indictment that would have charged Adams with destroying evidence and instructing others to lie to the FBI.
Although Adams has claimed the Justice Department’s move to drop his case proves his innocence, prosecutors have not echoed that assertion. Indeed, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove wrote in a February memo that the decision was purely political, and not based on “the strength of the evidence” or any legal precedent.
Other people implicated in the Adams case have not been lucky enough to escape prosecution. Brooklyn-based developer Erden Arkan and former Adams aide Mohamed Bahi both pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy charges for allegedly orchestrating the straw-donor scheme.
And separate criminal probes have ensnared other members of Adams’ inner circle. The Manhattan District Attorney indicted Adams’ former chief advisor Ingrid Lewis-Martin in December, accusing her and her son of accepting bribes from real estate developers. That case is ongoing, and prosecutors revealed on March 27 that they were presenting more evidence to a grand jury.
Still more Adams aides were swept up in a raft of raids last year, which stemmed from separate investigations by the Southern District and the Brooklyn-based Eastern District. Nobody has been charged in those investigations, which led investigators to seize phones belonging to First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, Schools Chancellor David Banks, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Phil Banks, Police Commissioner Edward Caban, senior adviser Tim Pearson and Asian affairs adviser Winnie Greco, among others. All of those officials left City Hall in the ensuing months.
