New York City Mayor Eric Adams leaves the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S., February 19, 2025.
Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters
A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed the criminal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, nearly two months after the Trump administration controversially sought to drop the case.
The case was dismissed “with prejudice,” which means the Department of Justice is permanently barred from resurrecting the charges against Adams based on the same evidence used in the case, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
The DOJ originally asked District Court Judge Dale Ho to toss the case “without prejudice,” which would have allowed prosecutors to refile charges against the Democrat in the future if the department chose to do so.
Ho, in a written order Wednesday, denied the DOJ’s request for a dismissal with prejudice, saying that doing so “would create the unavoidable perception that the Mayor’s freedom depends on his ability to carry out the immigration enforcement priorities of the administration, and that he might be more beholden to the demands of the federal government than to the wishes of his own constituents.”
“That appearance is inevitable, and it counsels in favor of dismissal with prejudice,” Ho wrote.
The judge noted that Adams had sought a dismissal of the charges with prejudice, and that the DOJ had not opposed that motion, “effectively waiving any object to permanent dismissal of this case.”
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