Earlier this week, the Department of Justice ordered the acting U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York to dismiss without prejudice a slew of federal corruption charges against New York mayor Eric Adams. For now, Adams is spared a protracted legal battle against allegations of bribery, fraud, and soliciting foreign campaign donations. Even before his September indictment, his administration had been shrouded in scandal, implicating not only the mayor but also several high-ranking officials. The ongoing legal controversies damaged Adams’s public standing and prospects for reelection. Now, having been rescued by Donald Trump, the mayor has exchanged legal peril for electoral trouble.
Adams’s association with Trump, and his reliance on the president’s good graces, will likely seal his fate with Democratic primary voters. From the start, Adams cast his prosecution as the same sort of meritless politicized “lawfare” unleashed against Trump, alleging that he became a target of federal prosecution only because of his criticism of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Since the November election, the city’s left-of-center voters have watched Adams praise Trump, promise cooperation with his policies, and dart from New York in the wee hours to attend the inauguration.
Democrats’ disgust with Adams is reflected in pointed statements issued by his rivals for the party’s mayoral nomination. None showed the slightest sympathy for the mayor or suggested that his prosecution was unfair. Even Adams’s most stalwart public defender, Al Sharpton, has tempered his support for the city’s second black mayor. “I’m not anti‑Adams, but I’m anti‑Trump, and a lot of people in the Black community share that sentiment,” Sharpton told the New York Times.
It’s hard to see how any candidate in a Democratic primary for mayor of New York could survive after expressing support for the president. A recent Manhattan Institute poll registers a 65 percent disapproval rating for Trump in the city. Adams has not only praised Trump but is now obviously in his debt. His outreach to a man whom many Democrats despise will make the mayor particularly unattractive to the city’s primary electorate, which, in recent years, has been dominated by progressive activists.
On the day after receiving the DOJ directive, Adams continued to simulate a mayoralty. He appeared in City Hall’s Blue Room, where he traditionally holds press conferences, but this time Adams spoke only to a camera. Facing no reporters, the mayor dubiously claimed that he is “no longer facing legal questions” and again presented himself as a falsely accused everyman from Queens. He vowed to “move forward.”
But the mayor may no longer have a vehicle for doing so. The Democratic Party is about to complete its turn against him. Even if he secures the Republican ballot line under the Wilson-Pakula rule, he would face a primary challenge from Curtis Sliwa, one of Adams’s most vocal critics and a popular figure with the city’s Republican voters. Barring more help from Trump, Adams’s chances of success would be slim in a GOP primary. A chameleon can only change colors so many times.
Moreover, despite the mayor’s claims, he has not been exonerated. The inquiry that led to Adams’s indictment began with his own Department of Investigation. The DOI lawyers who first flagged the irregularities in the mayor’s fundraising activities presumably retain control over the evidence they collected. So far, the city’s campaign finance board has barred Adams from receiving matching funds, citing his history of alleged fraud and his campaign’s failure to comply with board requests. Neither the Southern District of New York, nor the DOI, nor the campaign finance board has commented on the Justice Department’s intervention, and the possibility remains that any of these agencies, perhaps acting through the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, could pursue new charges against the mayor and others in his administration.
The Justice Department’s move leaves New York City in an unstable and bizarre situation. New York’s Democratic mayor has earned a reprieve from a Republican president, ending his legal troubles for the moment, but leaving him in an almost impossible political position. Unfortunately for the city, a second consecutive mayoral administration will likely end in frustration, dogged by corruption. The name of Adams’s successor remains anyone’s guess.
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