The Logic of Dropping the Case Against Mayor Adams

Judge Dale Ho’s dismissal of charges against Mayor Adams comes with a jab at President Trump’s Justice Department. In an echo of the claim by the erstwhile acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, Judge Ho decries Mr. Trump’s move to drop the case as a quid pro quo: “Everything here smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”Yet Judge Ho bowed to constitutional duty by deciding to dismiss the charges. This follows the guidance offered by the independent constitutional sage Paul Clement, assigned by Judge Ho to analyze the dispute. Mr. Clement didn’t weigh the brouhaha over dismissing the charges, calling that “an intramural dispute” that does not concern the court. Mr. Clement, too, concluded that Judge Ho had no choice but to drop the case. Given the separated nature of government powers under the Constitution, it’s hard to avoid the logic of Mr. Clement’s advice and of Judge Ho’s decision — despite the concerns raised about the political dimension of the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case. Then, too, there were plenty of questions about whether the case against Mr. Adams was marred by political considerations when it was brought under President Biden to begin with.Judge Ho’s decision to dismiss the case “with prejudice” goes at least some way toward dispelling the taint of politics from this dispute. Mr. Trump had asked the case to be dropped “without prejudice.” Doing so would have kept the prospect of the federales reopening the case looming over Hizzoner. That, critics averred, would have amounted to a form of manipulation via the threat of re-prosecution.The dueling claims of politicized justice, in any event, all serve to underscore the dilemmas posed by turning the criminal justice system against elected officials in the middle of a campaign. In other words, it looks like what we have called the American disease of lawfare. How, in the end, could anyone have deemed it possible to indict a mayor of New York City for corruption and assert with a straight face that it’s not political? After all, it’s easy enough for prosecutors to secure a criminal accusation from a grand jury, which, the famous saying goes, could be coaxed to indict a ham sandwich. Yet could prosecutors have secured a conviction? The checkered track record of federal prosecutions of public officials in New York is enough to give one pause. Feature the cases of two top state legislators: Joseph Bruno and Sheldon Silver. When prosecutors in 2015 moved on Silver, the Sun asked: “Are we the only paper that is not entirely comfortable with the arrest of the speaker of the New York Assembly, Sheldon Silver,” on federal charges? Silver’s arrest came months after a failed corruption case against Bruno, the majority leader in the state senate. He was accused by the feds of bribery but acquitted. The Times called it a “jarring rebuke for prosecutors.” Along the way, the law that prosecutors used to charge Bruno was curtailed in 2010 by the Supreme Court in the case of Skilling v. United States. The prosecution of Silver, too, ended up being crimped by the Supreme Court in a case that curbed the reach of prosecutors into the hurly-burly of politics. McDonnell v. United States was, among other things, a defeat for the Justice Department’s Jack Smith. McDonnell chastised prosecutors for criminalizing what Chief Justice Roberts called “the most commonplace requests for assistance” from public officials. It led Silver’s conviction to be voided, though he lost on retrial. Now Mr. Adams’ charges are dropped, leaving his reputation stained by the debacle. As he plans to run for reelection as an independent, where is he going to go — as President Reagan’s onetime Secretary of Labor asked after being acquitted — to get his reputation back?

The Logic of Dropping the Case Against Mayor Adams

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