Adams: 1, Trump: 0

Another judge spanks the DOJ.

Eric Adams may be headed for crushing defeat in the June mayoral primary, but yesterday he won big in federal court. Judge Dale Ho not only dismissed the bribery charges against the New York City mayor, but he did so with prejudice, ensuring that Adams won’t be reindicted.

The ruling lays bare the Justice Department’s gross impropriety and deprives the Trump administration of the benefit of the blatantly corrupt bargain it tried to extract from Mayor Adams. It will also serve as a disincentive if the DOJ tries to pull this trick again.

And that’s a win however you slice it.

Thursday Night Massacre

On February 10, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered Danielle Sassoon, the acting US Attorney at the Southern District of New York, to dismiss the Adams indictment. Bove stressed that the decision had nothing to do with the strength of the case. Instead he offered two explicitly political justifications for the demand.

First he suggested without evidence that the prior US Attorney had indicted Adams as revenge for the mayor’s immigration policies, thus tainting the proceedings with an appearance of impropriety — an argument rejected by the court when Adams brought it himself in October. Second, Bove claimed that the prosecution interfered with the mayor’s ability to help the Trump administration with its “immigration objectives.” And so he directed Sassoon to dismiss the case without prejudice, which would allow the government to refile charges at any time.

Sassoon refused to trade prosecutorial leniency for political cooperation, backed up by a threat to re-indict later if Mayor Adams failed to use his office to advance Trump’s policy goals.

“In your words, ‘the Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct,’" she wrote in a letter printed by the New York Times. “Dismissal of the indictment for no other reason than to influence Adams's mayoral decision-making would be all three.”