President Donald Trump’s border czar Thomas Homan, left, and New York Mayor Adams, right, and others, meeting in New York, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025.
Ed Reed | Office of the Mayor of New York via AP
President Donald Trump’s border czar implicitly warned New York Mayor Eric Adams during a joint televised interview Friday to follow through on his promise to allow federal immigration authorities into the city’s massive jail complex on Rikers Island.
“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on a couch,” said Trump immigration chief Thomas Homan Friday in a joint interview with Adams on “Fox and Friends.”
“I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'” Homan said.
Adams chuckled nervously during Homan’s comment, saying only, “We’re going to deliver for the safety of the people of this city.”
Adams’ promise Thursday to sign an executive order that would permit federal authorities to use Rikers came just hours after the stunning resignations of six top Department of Justice prosecutors, who quit rather than carry out the orders of a high-ranking DOJ official in Washington, that they dismiss criminal corruption charges filed against the mayor.
Shortly after the Homan and Adams appeared Friday on Fox News, news broke that assistant Manhattan U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten — who had been the lead prosecutor in the case — resigned.
“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion” to dismiss the Adams case, Scotten wrote high-ranking DOJ official Emil Bove in an email Friday.
Scotten’s former boss, acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, resigned Thursday after telling Attorney General Pam Bondi that Adams’ lawyers recently urged DOJ officials to agree to what amounted to a “quid pro quo” with the mayor.
In exchange for Adams’ bribery case being dropped by federal prosecutors, the mayor would allow the Trump administration to carry out immigration enforcement actions in New York City, Sassoon wrote in a letter to Bondi.
Adams and his lawyer, Alex Spiro, deny there is a quid pro quo deal with the DOJ.
Trump on Thursday denied telling the DOJ to dismiss the charges against Adams.
Adams was indicted in September on charges including campaign contribution conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery, which include allegations he accepted $100,000 worth of plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nations.
The order to dismiss the Adams case came from Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for Trump who now holds a top job at the DOJ.
Bove issued the directive first to Sassoon, who refused to do it and resigned. Bove then ordered several senior DOJ officials in Washington to carry out his demand.
Like Sassoon, they too refused to comply with Bove’s order.
As of Friday morning, the case against Adams technically remained pending in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Bove was appointed to his DOJ post by Trump after representing the president last year at his criminal hush money trial in New York, which ended in Trump’s conviction.
In her letter Wednesday to the attorney general, Sassoon said that Bove had proposed “dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws.”
Critics of Bove’s order have warned that by seeking to dismiss the criminal case against Adams without prejudice, meaning that the criminal charges can be re-filed at any time, the DOJ is effectively putting the mayor under its thumb.
If the prospect of a revived criminal case against Adams is constantly hanging over the mayor’s head, his ability to act independently, or refuse to do the president’s bidding, would be severely compromised, they say.