In Seeking Adams Dismissal, Trump’s Appointees Use Legal System to Their Advantage
In doing so, Mr. Trump’s team precipitated a serious crisis inside the department’s besieged unit responsible for investigating and prosecuting political corruption, and the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office. The astonishing move also drew Mr. Adams, who had begun to cultivate a close relationship to Mr. Trump, closer to the White House — at a time when the president is trying to assert dominance over big-city Democrats who might resist his push for immigration enforcement.
On Friday, hours before department officials signed off on a motion seeking the Adams dismissal, the mayor appeared on “Fox and Friends” with Mr. Trump’s border czar, Thomas Homan, to say he was not “standing in the way” of deportation efforts, unlike many of his fellow Democrats.
“I’m collaborating,” Mr. Adams said.
Mr. Trump, speaking from the Oval Office, told reporters he had not asked for the case against Mr. Adams to be dropped and knew nothing about it. But after the indictment landed in September, he criticized it at length, and in December, after his own election, he mused about being open to a pardon for Mr. Adams. Last month, the pair had a well-publicized meeting at his golf club in Palm Beach.
Emil Bove III, the Trump criminal defense lawyer turned top Justice Department official who demanded the dismissal, has said that the decision was based, in part, on restoring Mr. Adams’s security clearances so he could assist in immigration enforcement.
It is one “of the important priorities President Trump has laid out for us to make America safe again,” he wrote in a memo, which asserted that the request had nothing to do with a legal assessment of the case. Another key reason for the decision, Mr. Bove said, was the case’s timing. He claimed the indictment’s arrival, eight months before the June 2025 Democratic mayor primary, gave “appearances” of election interference.
