Mayor Adams in ‘Wonderland’

The federal indictment of Mayor Adams that has reportedly been handed up in New York marks a sad day for the city. The news is being met with calls for Hizzoner to resign. This began even before news of the indictment hit, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the head of the line. How did the Queen of Hearts put it to Alice? “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.” Eleven months into the investigation and New Yorkers still don’t yet know what’s in the indictment.So count our view as reserved — a view we first expressed in these columns back when the Feds were investigating Senator Joseph Bruno and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. “Are we the only paper that is not entirely comfortable,” the Sun asked in 2015, when Silver was being arrested “on charges handed up by the federal government?” It prompted another poser: “On what authority is America reaching into the legislature of New York State?”We carry no brief for Mayor Adams. Yet the record of federal prosecutors pursuing state and local officials is checkered. The Silver indictment came less than a year after another Albany power broker, Bruno, his career ruined, was acquitted by a federal jury in a corruption case. The Times called it a “jarring rebuke for prosecutors.” The charges were originally brought in 2009 then overturned by the Second Circuit in 2011.The circuit riders acted in part on the basis of an unrelated Supreme Court ruling curtailing the “Honest Services” fraud statute that prosecutors had partly relied on to convict Bruno. Undeterred, the Feds filed new charges against Bruno in 2013, contending he had been paid consulting fees that were a cover for bribes. The jury disagreed. “This system, it works; sometimes it’s slow, but it works,” Bruno crowed after his acquittal after years of federal scrutiny.Far from chastened, federal prosecutors accused Silver of taking $4 million in exchange for favors. He was convicted in 2015. Then, in 2016, the Supreme Court overturned yet another federal conviction of a state official — Governor McDonnell of Virginia — on bribery charges. The case had been brought under the aegis of Jack Smith, who is now pursuing President Trump with Javert-like zeal. Yet the Nine ruled eight to zero against the feds in the McDonnell case.Mr. Smith’s case against the governor had been hailed for “rooting out public corruption.” The justices, though, ended up expressing amazement at the weakness of the case. The attempt to punish Mr. McDonnell and his wife over the everyday give-and-take of politics “puts at risk behavior that is common,” Justice Stephen Breyer said in oral arguments. “That is a recipe for giving the Justice Department and prosecutors enormous power over elected officials.”Does that sound familiar? In Silver’s case, McDonnell’s limiting of the definition of corruption led the riders of the Second Circuit to overturn his conviction. That prompted a Sun editorial to revisit the “famous question” of another vindicated politician, Raymond Donovan, who had once asked: “Which office do I go to get my reputation back?” Silver, though, did not escape jail. He was convicted in 2018 after a retrial on the corruption charges.The Second Circuit in 2020 tossed parts of that conviction, warning how the case showed that an “official who accepts a thing of value” then helps a donor in any way “could be vulnerable” to prosecution. Silver’s convictions for money laundering and trading legal referrals for favors stood, though. He died in prison in 2022, prompting our Ira Stoll to note that the ex-speaker’s conviction for a “notoriously vague crime” ended up being “a death penalty.”Which brings us back to “Wonderland.” Just last year the Supreme Court — unanimously — tossed the bribery conviction of an aide to Governor Cuomo, Joseph Percoco. So forgive us if we don’t rush to demand that Mr. Adams resign. He vows to fight the charges. While we carry no brief for Mr. Adams, we do carry a brief for due process. Starting with the fact that the burden of proof in the mayor’s travail will, as always, be entirely on the prosecution._________This editorial was updated Wednesday evening for news of the sealed indictment of the mayor. Corrections: Justice Breyer’s remarks were made during oral arguments in the McDonnell case. An earlier version misstated the venue of the remarks. 2011 was the year that the Second Circuit overturned Joseph Bruno’s conviction on corruption charges. An earlier version misstated the year

Mayor Adams in ‘Wonderland’

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