By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -A New York judge on Friday said he would not immediately dismiss Eric Adams’ corruption case, but ordered the Democratic New York City mayor’s trial delayed indefinitely after the U.S. Justice Department asked him to drop the charges.
In a written ruling, U.S. District Judge Dale Ho in Manhattan said he would appoint an outside lawyer, Paul Clement of the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC, to present arguments against the prosecutors’ bid to dismiss to help him make a decision.
Justice Department officials in Washington on February 14 asked Ho to dismiss the charges against Adams, who has warmed to Republican President Donald Trump in recent months, visiting him in Florida and later attending his January 20 inauguration.
That came about after several prosecutors resigned rather than follow orders from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a Trump appointee and his former personal criminal defense lawyer, to seek dismissal of the case brought last year by prosecutors during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Adams, 64, was charged last September with taking bribes and campaign donations from Turkish nationals seeking to influence him. Adams, who is running for reelection this year, has pleaded not guilty.
At a court hearing on Wednesday, Bove argued that dismissal is needed so Adams can focus on helping Trump crack down on illegal immigration. The controversy has sparked a political crisis in the most populous U.S. city. Senior Democrats have said that dismissing the charges makes Adams beholden to Trump’s administration.
In his ruling on Friday, Ho wrote that because Adams and the Justice Department were aligned in their positions, there had been no “adversarial testing” of the motion to dismiss the case.
He said he would appoint Clement as a friend-of-the-court to help determine whether further inquiry was appropriate before deciding whether to dismiss the charges.
“An appointment is appropriate here to assist the court’s decision-making,” Ho wrote. “That is particularly so in light of the public importance of this case, which calls for careful deliberation.”
Clement was solicitor general during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush, and since returning to private practice has advocated on behalf of many conservative causes.
Clement, 58, had been on Trump’s list in 2020 of potential nominees to fill a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy.
Adams’ trial had been scheduled for April 21, ahead of the Democratic mayoral primary in June and the November general election.
Neither the mayor’s office, Adams’ defense lawyer Alex Spiro, nor the Justice Department immediately responded to requests for comment.
‘QUID PRO QUO’
In a February 10 letter, Bove ordered Danielle Sassoon, the acting Manhattan U.S. attorney at the time, to seek dismissal, stating that the charges got in the way of the mayor’s reelection bid and caused Adams to lose his security clearance, limiting his ability to work with federal authorities on public safety.
Bove said the decision to drop the charges had nothing to do with the case’s merits.
Adams has asserted, without presenting evidence, that Biden’s Justice Department brought the charges as retribution for his criticism of Biden’s immigration policy.
Sassoon, who was considered a rising star in conservative legal circles, resigned rather than comply with Bove’s order. Seven other prosecutors followed.
In a February 12 letter to Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi opposing Bove’s directive, Sassoon said the mayor’s lawyers had proposed what amounted to a “quid pro quo” in which Adams would help enforce Trump’s hardline immigration policies only if the charges were dropped. Trump has ramped up deportations since returning to office.
Lawyers for Adams have denied he traded support for Trump’s policies for assistance from the administration on his criminal case.
New York state Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said on Thursday she would not use her power to remove Adams, but proposed new oversight of the mayor’s office.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Jonathan Stempel in New York, and Andrew Goudsward in Washington;Editing by Will Dunham, Noeleen Walder and Bill Berkrot)
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