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corruption
Trump Justice Department Moves to Complete 'Openly Corrupt Legal Bailout' of Eric Adams
"The Adams case confirms that as long as Bondi is in office, the rule of law will be subordinate to Trump's personal motivations."
Feb 15, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's Justice Department formally moved Friday night to drop charges against Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams after at least seven federal prosecutors resigned, refusing to carry out what's been described as an "openly corrupt legal bailout."
In a new filing signed by veteran prosecutor Edward Sullivan, the Department of Justice requested "dismissal without prejudice of the charges" against Adams, who was indicted last year on multiple counts of wire fraud, bribery, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations after an investigation that began in 2021. "Without prejudice" means the charges could be brought again.
It's an open question how Dale Ho, the judge overseeing the case, will respond. Some experts say he could reject the DOJ's request on the grounds that it is politically motivated.
The Justice Department, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, has said openly that its push to dismiss the charges against Adams has nothing to do with the "strength of the evidence" against Adams.
Rather, the decision is a remarkably transparent effort to ensure the New York City mayor's full cooperation with Trump's anti-immigrant agenda.
Sullivan reportedly signed the new Justice Department filing under significant duress. According to Reuters, Bove "told the department's career public integrity prosecutors in a meeting on Friday that they had an hour to decide among themselves who would file the motion," signaling they would all be fired if no one capitulated.
"The volunteer was Ed Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, who agreed to alleviate pressure on his colleagues in the department's public integrity section," Reutersreported, citing two unnamed sources. "Sullivan's decision came after the attorneys in the meeting contemplated resigning en masse, rather than filing the motion to dismiss... There are approximately 30 attorneys in the Public Integrity Section."
"I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."
Brewing opposition inside the Justice Department exploded into public view this week as prosecutors opted to step down rather than carry out the DOJ leadership's orders to seek dismissal of the Adams charges.
Danielle Sassoon, former interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who announced her departure earlier this week, wrote in a letter to Bondi on February 12 that she was "baffled by the rushed and superficial process" by which the decision to drop the charges against Adams was reached, "in seeming collaboration with Adams' counsel and without my direct input."
In a footnote of the letter, Sassoon described a meeting she and members of her team attended with Bove—who previously served as a member of Trump's personal legal team—and Adams' counsel.
"Adams' attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed," Sassoon wrote. "Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion."
Shortly before the Justice Department submitted its new filing on Friday, Hagan Scotten, a federal prosecutor assigned to the Adams case, announced his resignation in a scathing letter to Bove.
"No system of ordered liberty can allow the government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives," Scotten wrote. "Any assistant U.S. attorney would know
that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way."
"If no lawyer within earshot of the president is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion," he added. "But it was never going to be me."
Ahead of the DOJ's filing, Adams appeared on "Fox & Friends" alongside Trump immigration czar Tom Homan in what one observer characterized as a hostage video "broadcast live on national television."
During the segment, Homan smilingly threatened that if Adams "doesn't come through" for the Trump administration, "we won't be sitting on a couch; I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'"
In a separate sitdown with Homan on Thursday, Adams committed to "return federal immigration agents to the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City," Politicoreported.
Thinly veiled Homan warning to Adams: “If he doesn’t come through … I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, Where the hell is the agreement we came to” pic.twitter.com/Pq0msJXZGb
— Emily Ngo (@emilyngo) February 14, 2025
In a column on Friday, The American Prospect's Ryan Cooper and David Dayen wrote that it is "striking just how awesomely gratuitous this all is."
"Nixon sacked his attorney general because the investigation was closing in on him personally and he wanted to escape. It was corrupt, but it made sense as a desperate last-ditch effort," they wrote. "Trump is letting Adams off the hook because he wants a stooge dependent on his goodwill in the mayor's seat while his deportation goons run riot in New York. That's a modest benefit at best; the mayor has limited tools to prevent ICE operations, though he's already offered up Rikers Island, the notorious prison that was due to close, as a migrant detention center."
"And it shows that the most willing enabler of Trump corruption in the entire government is Attorney General Bondi," Cooper and Dayen added. "This is approximately how she ran the Justice Department in Florida, doing favors for her donors and allies while firing attorneys in the department who got in the way, like the prosecutors looking into foreclosure fraud. The Adams case confirms that as long as Bondi is in office, the rule of law will be subordinate to Trump's personal motivations."
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Raskin Condemns Trump DOJ's 'Illegal Intimidation' of Anti-Corruption Division
"It's time to do your job and stop this outrageous sabotage of justice in the interests of naked political corruption," said the lawmaker.
Feb 14, 2025
Amid reports that attorneys in the Public Integrity Section at the U.S. Department of Justice—those tasked with fighting political corruption—were being intimidated into dismissing the federal criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Friday, Congressman Jamie Raskin demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi "immediately halt" the actions of DOJ leaders.
A day after three top federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned following a demand from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to drop the case against Adams, MSNBC legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade reported that DOJ leaders had given the remaining lawyers in the anti-corruption unit an ultimatum.
They "put all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with one hour to decide who will dismiss [the] Adams indictment or else all will be fired," said McQuade.
Reutersreported Friday afternoon that one of the attorneys, veteran prosecutor Ed Sullivan, agreed to file a motion to dismiss the charges in order to spare the jobs of his colleagues in the Public Integrity Section.
On Thursday, Danielle R. Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned after receiving a memo from Bove saying the charges against Adams would interfere with his ability to fight "illegal immigration and violent crime."
The acting head of the Public Integrity Section and the acting head of the DOJ's Criminal Division also refused to drop the case and resigned.
Adams was charged with bribery, campaign finance violations, and conspiracy offenses last year, with U.S. attorneys saying an investigation had found that he allegedly took bribes from foreign nationals, including to allow a skyscraper in Manhattan to open without a fire inspection.
In a letter to Bondi, Sassoon wrote that "Adams' attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed."
A lawyer for Adams toldThe New York Times Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was "a total lie," but President Donald Trump's border czar, Thomas Homan, alluded to the deal in a Fox News appearance with Adams on Friday.
"If he doesn't come through," said Homan, "I'll be in his office, up his butt, saying, 'Where the hell is the agreement we came to?'"
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of immigrant rights group America's Voice, said the Trump administration's engagement in the alleged deal reflected the president's "obsessive focus on mass deportations."
"His obsession to purge America of immigrants seems to have no limit: cutting a quid pro quo with Mayor Adams, to drop criminal charges in return for immigrant roundups; diverting resources from stopping fentanyl at ports of entry to deport workers; gutting entire immigrant-dependent industries that put food on the table and keep prices low; and intruding into the homes and apartments and going door-to-door to instill fear among people mostly legal, many citizens," she said.
Raskin (D-Md.) demanded that Bondi "put an immediate halt to this illegal and unconscionable intimidation campaign."
"Your Department of Justice has been caught engaging in a corrupt deal with Mayor Adams and now attempting to cover it up," he said in a statement. "It's time to do your job and stop this outrageous sabotage of justice in the interests of naked political corruption."
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With CFPB Purge, Trump Set to Deliver 'Corrupt Bounty' to Wall Street—and Elon Musk
"No move could more clearly show whose side Trump and Musk are on—and who they are willing to exploit," said Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman.
Feb 14, 2025
The only U.S. agency tasked solely with protecting consumers from predatory corporations was hit particularly hard this week by the Trump administration's sweeping purge of the federal workforce, a gift to financial institutions that prey on working-class Americans with exorbitant fees and other abusive practices—and a potential boon for Elon Musk's personal business empire.
Employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), currently run in an acting capacity by Project 2025 architect and White House budget chief Russell Vought, reportedly began receiving termination emails Tuesday night, with the agency's enforcement division bearing the brunt of the firings.
Contractors and workers who were hired within the past one or two years were the primary targets of the latest round of terminations, Wiredreported.
The outlet noted that the wave of terminations followed "a tumultuous few days at the CFPB" as Musk's lieutenants at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) "shut down a portion of the agency's homepage after a day of struggling to obtain access" to bureau systems last Friday.
That same night, Trump installed Vought at the helm of the CFPB, a move critics warned was a step toward Musk's stated goal of destroying the bureau.
Vought, a far-right ideologue, moved swiftly to halt virtually all of the agency's work, and even set up a "tip line" inviting corporations to file a report if they are "being pursued by CFPB enforcement or supervision staff, in violation of Acting Director Russ Vought's stand down order."
Robert Weissman of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a statement Thursday that "with their illegal and unconstitutional move to eliminate the CFPB, co-presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump aim to deliver a corrupt bounty to Big Banks, predatory lenders, and other financial corporations."
"The CFPB has eliminated junk fees, capped credit card late charges, stopped the weaponization of medical debt, sued giant corporations, handled tens of thousands of individual complaints and provided relief to consumers of more than $21 billion—of course Big Banks, payday lenders, and financial scam artists want to eliminate it," Weissman added.
"This is a free pass for financial institutions to take advantage of consumers."
The Public Citizen co-president also put the spotlight on another potential motivation behind the Trump administration's zealous assault on the CFPB: Musk's foray into financial services, building off his existing control of X with a partnership with Visa that would allow peer-to-peer payments on the social media platform and beyond.
"Musk has a direct interest in eliminating the agency, which would be a regulator of X if it proceeds with well-reported plans to provide money transfer services," said Weissman. "No move could more clearly show whose side Trump and Musk are on—and who they are willing to exploit."
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) noted in a statement Sunday that "if the CFPB can't do its job, no federal regulator will be able to prevent Elon Musk from building a financial services company."
More broadly, CFA pointed out that if the Trump administration shuts down or neuters the CFPB, no other agency will be able to assume the unique consumer protection role it played without a specific act of Congress.
"The CFPB was created after excessive risk-taking by financial companies, many of whom were not supervised by a federal regulator, crashed our economy," said Adam Rust, CFA's director of financial services. "It was created to protect people, not empower Elon Musk. If this administration chooses to cover its eyes from the facts, people will be put in harm’s way. This is a free pass for financial institutions to take advantage of consumers."
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