Justice Dept. Is Said to Discuss Dropping Case Against Eric Adams

Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.

The officials have also spoken to Mr. Adams’s defense team since Mr. Trump took office, the people said. The defense team is led by Alex Spiro, who is also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the president’s closest advisers.

Mr. Trump has the power to pardon Mr. Adams, who as New York City’s mayor could aid his plans for mass deportations. In December, Mr. Trump said that the mayor had been treated “pretty unfairly” by prosecutors and suggested he was considering issuing a pardon.

But if prosecutors were to dismiss the case entirely, it could allow Mr. Adams to insist on his innocence to voters as he seeks another term as mayor, while allowing Mr. Trump to avoid the appearance of a pardon that many might view as unwarranted.

In pushing for the case to be dropped, two of the people with knowledge said, Mr. Spiro has observed to department officials that Mr. Trump has criticized it. The two people said that the defense lawyer has also suggested that the mayor would not be inclined to cooperate with the president’s immigration crackdown if he remained under indictment.

In a statement, Mr. Spiro strongly denied that he had made any such suggestion: “That is a complete lie.”

Department officials in Washington are expected to meet with Manhattan prosecutors and, separately, with Mr. Adams’s team, as soon as this week.

Mr. Adams was indicted in September on charges including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions after an investigation that began in 2021. He has pleaded not guilty, maintained his innocence and contended that he is being prosecuted because he criticized the Biden administration’s immigration policies as New York has received a historic influx of migrants. Federal prosecutors have firmly rebutted that claim.

In recent weeks, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has curried favor with Mr. Trump. He met with the president-elect near Mar-a-Lago, attended the inauguration and has said that, from now on, he will share any criticisms of the president in private.

The two men, according to several people close to the mayor, have been in direct communication for weeks, speaking on the phone. At their meeting in West Palm Beach earlier this month, they did not discuss a pardon, but Mr. Trump did speak about a “weaponized” Justice Department, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

A spokesman for the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment. The office, known for its independence, is being led on an interim basis by Danielle R. Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor selected by the Trump administration.

Mr. Adams, who is running for re-election this year, presides over a so-called sanctuary city, one where Trump administration officials began a crackdown this week on undocumented migrants. The Justice Department is among the agencies leading that crackdown.

In a memo last week, the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, threatened to prosecute local officials who interfere with the administration’s immigration agenda.

Mr. Trump’s nominee to be deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who was Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer in his criminal cases over the past two years and is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, was not part of the discussions, a senior Justice Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions. Mr. Blanche has not yet gone through the Senate confirmation process.

Another Justice Department official said all communications between Manhattan prosecutors and Mr. Adams’s legal team about the case had gone through the office of Mr. Bove, who is also a former Southern District prosecutor and worked with Mr. Blanche on Mr. Trump’s criminal cases.

It is not unusual for leaders of the Justice Department in Washington to discuss high-profile criminal cases with prosecutors in Manhattan, and there is no indication that officials at the Southern District are inclined to drop the case. But the timing of the discussions, before the confirmation of Mr. Trump’s choices for attorney general and U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Pam Bondi and Jay Clayton, raises questions about whether the temporary officials currently running the department are trying to hurry a decision.

It is also commonplace for defense lawyers in major cases to ask senior Justice Department officials in Washington to scale back or drop prosecutions. What is notable, however, is that such discussions are happening at a time when there is a skeleton crew of Trump administration officials running the department, which is undergoing major personnel and policy changes.

The discussions come at a time of uncertainty for federal corruption prosecutors. Earlier this week, the head of the department’s public integrity section resigned rather than accept a forced transfer to an unrelated part of the agency.

And for prosecutors in the Southern District, the stakes are high, in more ways than one.

If senior department officials order Ms. Sassoon to dismiss the case and she refuses, she would in all likelihood face a choice between resigning or being fired. Were she — or anyone who might succeed her as the office’s interim leader — to follow their orders, it could allow Mr. Adams to suggest that the dismissal was an acknowledgment that the prosecution had been a mistake from the beginning.

In December, the mayor’s defense lawyers revealed in court papers that prosecutors had presented additional evidence to a grand jury in his case, suggesting that more charges could be coming against the mayor himself, his associates or both.

Earlier this month, prosecutors wrote in another filing that they had continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams” and “identify additional individuals involved,” another indication that new charges might be in the works. The filing provided no additional detail on the conduct they said they had uncovered.

Under Mr. Trump, federal prosecutors have moved swiftly to halt several ongoing cases, including one against a Texas surgeon accused of obtaining private medical information about gender-transition care for minors and another against Jeffrey Fortenberry, a Republican congressman from Nebraska who was facing a second trial related to campaign finance violations.

Glenn Thrush and Ben Protess contributed reporting.