Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, was once a rising star in the Democratic Party, a former police captain dedicated to confronting violent crime who was popular with middle-class Black and Latino voters.
But his reputation began to wane months after taking office as federal authorities investigated him for corruption. Now it is in tatters, as critics accuse him of trying to save his own skin by selling out to President Donald Trump.
Adams’ detractors say he has entered into a Faustian pact with the Trump administration by agreeing to crack down on illegal immigration in exchange for federal corruption charges against him being dropped.
Adams has denied such an arrangement. But even erstwhile Democratic allies accuse him of placing his own interests ahead of those of 8mn New Yorkers and fear he is now beholden to the Republican president. Many are calling on him to resign.
“He’s put New York City up for sale and Trump is the highest bidder,” said Michael Weinstein, a former Department of Justice trial attorney who is now head of white-collar defence at law firm Cole Schotz.
The saga has its roots in the events of last September when Adams was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and conspiracy as part of a scheme involving Turkey’s government.
Adams has pleaded not guilty. But the charges blew a hole in his approval ratings and have damaged his chances of re-election.
Senior Democrats pointedly failed to rally round him. His standing in the party had taken a nosedive after he openly criticised then-president Joe Biden’s immigration policies, complaining in 2023 that the influx of 100,000 asylum seekers had pushed New Yorkers “past our breaking point”.
Last year, though, he acquired an unlikely ally in Trump, who on the campaign trail said Adams was being punished for his tough line on the migrant crisis.
“I know what it’s like to be persecuted by the DoJ [Department of Justice] for speaking out against open borders,” Trump said at a charity dinner last October, fuelling speculation that should he win, he might pardon Adams if he were convicted.
Adams stoked those rumours by flying to Florida in January to meet Trump near his Mar-a-Lago compound, an unusual move for a Democratic politician. He also attended the president’s inauguration.
Then, in a stunning twist last week, acting deputy attorney-general Emil Bove, Trump’s former personal criminal defence lawyer who is now number two at the DoJ, ordered the charges against Adams be dropped.
Bove wrote prosecutors had “unduly restricted mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime”, and added the case would be reconsidered after the mayoral election in November.
The Bove memo sparked outrage among legal observers, who said Trump was using the DoJ to advance his political agenda. The department was signalling it wanted to “centralise every decision in every investigation and in every prosecutorial matter throughout the country”, Weinstein said.
“Each of the US Attorneys’ Offices is feeling as though its independence is being challenged and its discretion restricted,” he added, calling it “a bad precedent for the country”.
Rather than comply with Bove’s order, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned and said dismissing the charges would be a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent”. Six other prosecutors followed.
The Southern District prosecutor’s office, among the most powerful in the country, has a reputation for independence and resistance to interference from Washington, and many were unsurprised by her reaction.
“It’s the jewel of the federal prosecutor system,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a political strategist. “It’s a cross between a cult, a fraternity and a religion — so any attempt to compromise its integrity will make the people who serve there very angry.”
Sassoon said in a letter she sent last week to attorney-general Pam Bondi, a Trump appointee, that Adams’ lawyers had proposed a “quid pro quo”: the charges against the mayor would be dismissed “in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws”.
She said Bove’s memo also left open the possibility of reviving the charges against Adams and “implicitly threaten[s] future prosecution” if the White House is dissatisfied with his enforcement of immigration laws.
It was this aspect of the alleged deal that enraged many legal observers. “In effect they’re holding a sword over the mayor’s head,” said Richard Briffault, an expert in government ethics at Columbia Law School. “The way people read this was, as long as he’s co-operative they won’t bring the case against him, but if he isn’t, they could.”
On Wednesday, Bove appeared before a US judge in lower Manhattan who will consider the motion to drop the charges. The acting deputy attorney-general described his request as a “standard exercise of prosecutorial discretion” and asserted that the indictment against the mayor had negatively affected Trump’s “national security and immigration objectives”.
Adams also appeared in the court, met by a small group of protesters who chanted “We don’t need a Maga mayor — Adams out now!”
The mayor denied under oath that he had done a deal with prosecutors. He also said he understood that the charges against him could be revived. “I have not committed a crime, and I don’t see them bringing it back,” he said.
His lawyer, Alex Spiro, said a quid pro quo “never happened”.
Despite Adams’ denials, the clamour for him to step down is growing, with four of his deputies resigning this week in a sign of collapsing support from within his own administration.
“These resignations are the culmination of the mayor’s actions and decisions that have led to months of instability and now compromise the city’s sovereignty, threaten chaos, and risk harm to our families,” said Adrienne Adams, speaker of the city council, who is not related to the mayor. She called on him to “prioritise New York City and New Yorkers . . . and resign”.
Others have demanded Kathy Hochul, New York state’s Democratic governor, fire Adams. On Thursday she announced she would not remove him but would instead increase oversight of the mayor’s office.
“New York is facing a grave threat from Washington,” she said. “The Trump administration is already trying to use the legal jeopardy facing our mayor as leverage to squeeze and punish our city.”
The scandal over the Bove letter has undermined many New Yorkers’ confidence in their mayor. Some fear that in agreeing to help Trump’s immigration crackdown, he will end up compromising local laws, and New York’s status as a “sanctuary city”, which prohibits local officials from helping federal immigration agents enforce immigration law.
Briffault said: “This deal shows Adams is willing to sell out his independent authority and the laws that the city itself has adopted to keep his position.”
