Mayor Adams’ attorney asks Manhattan federal judge to drop his case for good

After weeks of legal drama, Mayor Eric Adams is asking a federal judge to drop his criminal charges for good, saying prosecutors violated his rights and various court rules.

Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, on Wednesday morning submitted a motion to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” which means prosecutors could not bring the charges back in the future. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice requested to set the charges aside temporarily, leaving open the possibility of pursuing the case once again after the November mayoral election.

In his motion, Spiro said “an extraordinary flurry of leaked internal Justice Department correspondence,” including letters sent between prosecutors involved in the case and DOJ officials, would prevent Adams from being able to get a fair trial.

“Simply put, the government’s conduct has destroyed whatever presumption of innocence Mayor Adams had left,” he said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In recent weeks, a dispute has intensified between the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City — nicknamed the “Sovereign District” for its record of independence — and DOJ officials in Washington, D.C. The conflict over Adams’ case has emerged in rare public detail, because the New York Times obtained a series of letters exchanged between the officials.

In early February memo, acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove directed prosecutors in the Southern District to stop pursuing their case against Adams, arguing that they charged the mayor too close to the election and that their case was interfering with his ability to focus on immigration and violent crime. Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon responded on Feb. 12 with her own letter asking the DOJ to reconsider. She stood by the charges and accused Adams’ attorneys of pressing for the case to be dropped in exchange for his help with immigration enforcement.

But the DOJ continued to push for the dismissal of Adams’ indictment, prompting Sassoon and several other prosecutors to resign. DOJ prosecutors in D.C. then filed a motion asking a judge to dismiss the case.

Spiro said in his new filing that leaks of Sassoon’s letter and other exchanges between prosecutors about the case caused Adams “extreme prejudice,” including the resignations of several high-ranking City Hall officials and calls from elected officials for Adams' resignation.

“Indeed, media outlets, commentators, self-proclaimed ‘friends of the court,’ and Mayor Adams’s political opponents, both old and new, have all seized on the Feb. 12 letter as evidence both that Mayor Adams is guilty and that the Justice Department’s correct decision to dismiss this case was somehow wrongful,” he said.

Spiro has repeatedly accused the government of leaking information to the press in the lead-up to Adams’ indictment and afterward — an allegation that prosecutors have denied.

“Now it’s déjà vu all over again,” Spiro wrote in his motion. He said Sassoon’s letter “contained a number of false and inflammatory statements that have irreparably prejudiced Mayor Adams.”

The defense attorney criticized Sassoon for saying she was “confident” that Adams was guilty and said her statements were meant to “manipulate public perception.” He also said, in bold and italicized font, that the mayor and the DOJ “never made or even discussed any deal” to trade his help with federal enforcement efforts for his charges being dropped.

“Indeed, it is a ludicrous notion that the mayor’s lawyers walked into the Department of Justice and proceeded to try to ‘bribe’ the highest-ranking officials in the Department to drop a bribery case, all right in front of the Southern District prosecutors who were pursuing the case,” he said. “But the letter’s disregard for the truth only fueled the fire that an illicit quid pro quo had occurred — all to Mayor Adams’ severe detriment.”

Days after the DOJ asked a judge to dismiss Adams’ charges, the mayor announced that he was working with President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan to draft an executive order that would allow federal immigration officials to operate on Rikers Island. Both men also appeared together on “Fox and Friends,” where Homan said if Adams didn’t follow through with his promises, “I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”

Judge Dale Ho, who is presiding over Adams’ case, said in court last week that he would carefully consider the government’s request to dismiss the case, but that he didn’t want to “shoot from the hip.” Days later, he assigned an outside attorney to argue against dropping the charges. In a ruling, he said he wanted another perspective, because prosecutors and the mayor’s defense attorneys are now both aligned on their desire to dismiss Adams’ case. A hearing is slated for mid-March.

This story has been updated with additional information.