This commentary was recorded the afternoon of February 19. That very day, there was an important hearing held before a federal judge in New York City. The issue was the decision of the Trump Justice Department to order the dropping of all charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. He had been indicted for bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. The case was set to go to trial this coming April. However, the Trump Justice Department, in the person of Emil Bove, ordered the prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop the charges. This set off a firestorm of protest that ultimately led to the resignation of 8 career prosecutors as well as the newly appointed US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Rather than comply with Bove’s order, Danielle Sassoon – a former clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia who had just recently been appointed by Trump penned an extremely sharp letter of resignation. The result was that at the hearing to determine whether a Federal Judge will actually follow the Justice Department request and dismiss the case, the government was represented solely by Mr. Bove. [Details on the hearing here.]
Mr. Bove’s point was that the prosecution of Mayor Adams was interfering with his ability to aid the federal government in its enforcement of immigration law. This is a neat way of admitting that the Justice Department decision to give Mayor Adams a “get out of jail free” card was the result of a quid pro quo. Adams will drop his opposition to permitting ICE inside New York City owned institutions (such as the Rikers Island Jail) which --- by the way --- is in direct contradiction to a series of laws adopted by the NY City Council in 2014. These laws all but stopped the city’s police and jails from helping federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deport undocumented immigrants. These laws are still in effect and Adams has promised to ignore them.
(For those who think this non-cooperation approach is wrong ask yourselves --- do New York City police enforce the federal tax laws, the laws against counterfeiting? No, that’s why we have the FBI and other federal law enforcement organizations. There are enough crimes committed at the local level to keep the local police busy – Every time an NYPD officer were to help ICE enforce immigration law, a local law breaker would have an higher chance of getting away with a crime.)
It seems very likely that Adams has made a deal with the Trump Justice Department to trade his flouting of those laws for a dismissal of the charges against him. This disgusting quid pro quo has led a former member of Adams’ transition team to write an OP ED in the NY Daily News calling on Governor Hochul to remove Adams from office. As of this writing, she has taken that recommendation under advisement.
[For the argument by former Adams aide Steven Choi.]
The proof that this is the real deal was stated by none other than Trump’s border czar Tom Homan. In a joint interview with Adams in Newsweek, Homan specifically said:
“It he [Adams] doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City. And we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?” --- note the word agreement.
[The entire interview is available here.]
When Newsweek suggested that this looked like Homan was admitting that Adams was trading access to city property previously off limits to ICE (specifically the Rikers Island jail) for the Justice Department dropping charges against him, Homan tried to walk it back. He gave numerous interviews in which he argued that he had been talking with Mayor Adams for months about getting into Rikers Island, etc. And that he himself had nothing to do with the Justice Department decision. But in fact, his story actually supports the idea that there was a quid pro quo. He had been talking to Adams about opening up Rikers for months --- but Adams did not seem to bend until the Trump Justice Department ordered the local US attorney to drop the charges against Adams.
In Sassoon’s letter to Attorney General Bondi she described the decision of drop the charges as CORRUPT with no basis in fact or law. She also argued against the reasoning used by Bove before the Judge:
“[Assistant Attorney General] Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws, analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the United States freed notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia. Such an exchange with Adams violates commonsense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the Justice Manual, and the Rules of Professional Conduct.”
Her letter is a wonderful example of someone putting principal above ambition. The entire letter is here.
The Governor of NY has the legal ability to suspend or remove Adams from office for his deal making misconduct. I had hoped that she will do this --- before ICE begins to run wild in Rikers and other city owned facilities.
Meanwhile, Adams’ top deputies also are quitting in protest. [Details here.] Who knows how long Adams will stay on as Mayor in this context even if Hochul herself does not act.
For people not in or near New York City, this is still an important story. The bottom line is that Trump will do anything to get what he wants. Laws do not matter. (There are even rumblings within the Trump Administration suggesting he might refuse to obey a Court ruling! --- and of course everyone knows that happened before when President Andrew Jackson famously said [Supreme Court Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision. Let him enforce it!” In other words, what is happening in New York --- a corrupt deal to defeat the will of the local voters --- can happen anywhere.
FLASH – just before this was submitted to the WAMC website, Governor Hochul decided not to remove Adams. The story is here.
Let’s hope there are other ways to stop Trump’s ICE from ravaging the immigrant communities in New York and elsewhere.
Michael Meeropol is professor emeritus of Economics at Western New England University. He is the author with Howard and Paul Sherman of the recently published second edition of Principles of Macroeconomics: Activist vs. Austerity Policies.
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