Attorney General Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, took to X in the hours before a federal court hearing in New York for a judge to mull over the recent motion to dismiss criminal charges against Mayor Adams, succinctly laying out their case for having the whole matter thrown out. 

Mr. Mizelle’s theory closely mirrored the case laid out by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove during Wednesday’s hearing. Mr. Bove told Judge Dale Ho that the DOJ’s request to dismiss the case was “a standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”

Mr. Bove also alleged that the charges against Mayor Adams was an abuse of the criminal justice system and amounted to an “appearance of impropriety.”

Mr. Mizelle posted on X on Wednesday a sprawling thread in which he claimed, “The case against Mayor Adams was just one in a long history of past DOJ actions that represent grave errors of judgement” and that the federal agency was “going back to basics.”

Mr. Mizelle said that the prosecution of Mr. Adams raised a set of “unique concerns” but turned his attention to one particular dimension  — the difficulty of securing a bribery conviction.

“To win a bribery conviction against a public official, DOJ must show some official act in exchange for benefits — a quid pro quo,” Mr. Mizelle writes. “What is the official act alleged in this indictment? Well, the main event took place before Adams was even Mayor.”

“EVERY TIME DOJ has pursued expansive theories of public corruption, the Department has been rebuked by the Supreme Court,” Mr. Mizelle wrote. “Put simply, DOJ’s track record of public corruption cases at the Supreme Court is abysmal.”

Among the examples included in the thread are the 2024 case of Snyder v. United States, where the Supreme Court overturned the federal bribery conviction of the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, James Snyder, who was alleged to have received “illegal gratuities.” The Nine rejected a theory from DOJ prosecutors that accepting graft had constituted a quid pro quo bribery. 

Mr. Mizelle also referred to a pair of cases from 2023 which were brought before the Supreme Court that pertained to Governor Cuomo. In Ciminelli v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the wire fraud conviction related to Mr. Cuomo’s “Buffalo Billion” initiative, an economic development program in which western New York land developer Louis Ciminelli  was convicted of wire fraud. The Nine deemed the DOJ’s theory of criminal liability “invalid.”

In a separate case against Mr. Cuomo’s top aide at the time, Joe Percoco, the court shot down the DOJ’s theory about the liability private citizens have for fraud surrounding “honest-services” in a case linked to the former executive secretary.

“By the way, both Ciminelli and Percoco were decided on the same day, May 11, 2023. What a stunning rebuke to the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York — Losing 18-0 in a single day,” Mr. Mizelle said.

Also among the examples include the overturning of convictions surrounding the infamous “Bridgegate” scandal in New Jersey, after the Supreme Court determined that the DOJ’s definition for federal fraud was too broad while hearing arguments in Kelly v. United States.

“Clearly, this history and case law underscores the legal risks associated with prosecuting Mayor Adams. DOJ could win a bribery conviction against a public official only by showing some official act in exchange for benefits,” he said.

Mr. Bove wrote in his motion filed last week that the DOJ is seeking the dismissal because they did not fully evaluate “the evidence or the legal theories” before handing down charges and indicated that they were preventing Mr. Adams from giving his “full attention and resources to addressing illegal immigration and violent crime.” 

Some seven prosecutors, including the acting United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, have resigned rather than endorse the dismissal.

Mr. Trump has said he reckons Mr. Adams was the victim of an unfair prosecution and has railed repeatedly against what he called a politicized Biden Justice Department, which charged him with multiple felonies in two separate cases. Those charges were all dropped after Mr. Trump won re-election.