We will see if President Donald Trump is able to buy Gaza and Greenland. But as of Monday, Trump owns Eric Adams.
Last September, the mayor of New York City was charged with conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting foreign campaign contributions, and bribery in a five-count federal indictment. Adams denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to all charges; he also quickly began claiming, without evidence, that the charges were punishment for the mayor’s complaints about Joe Biden’s immigration policy. That victimization argument found two very sympathetic ears on Trump: “We were persecuted, Eric,” the then presidential hopeful said at a charity dinner they both attended in October. “I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric.”
After Trump won in November—with Adams’s April-set trial looming—the mayor’s groveling kicked into full gear, aggressively and embarrassingly. Adams flew to Florida for lunch with the president-elect; he raced to Washington in the middle of the night to attend Trump’s inauguration; and he made another trip to DC to show his face at a prayer breakfast where Trump was speaking. The mayor also broadcast his willingness to get out of the way of Trump’s deportation offensive, and Adams wisely hired Elon Musk’s lawyer to handle his defense.
All the suck-uppery paid off. On Monday, Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, sent a letter telling the prosecutors handling the case to drop it. As if the letter’s becoming public so quickly didn’t send a clear enough message, Bove’s language, while not criticizing the merits of the case or the prosecutors involved, made plain what Trump wants for his end of the deal: “We are particularly concerned about the impact of the prosecution on Mayor Adams’ ability to support critical, ongoing federal efforts ‘to protect the American people from the disastrous effects of unlawful mass migration and resettlement,’” Bove wrote, quoting, in that last bit, one of Trump’s executive orders. And if Adams does not supply sufficient “support” for the president’s agenda? Well, Bove happened to mention that the case could be reviewed down the road after this year’s mayoral election.
For the time being, though, New York City will be governed by a mayor who is beholden to a right-wing would-be tyrant. The ugly consequences were already in motion before Trump moved to squash Adams’s trial. Hours before news of Bove’s letter broke, The City reported that Adams was telling his top commissioners not to criticize the president and not to interfere with immigration raids. (“Mayor Adams often speaks to his top leaders to discuss what they’re seeing on the ground in their respective departments and ways we can continue working together to provide for the people of New York City,” mayoral press secretary Kayla Mamelak Altus told The City after its article was published. “As he has said publicly many times, the mayor wants to find ways to work with the federal administration, not war with them.”) “There should no longer be any doubt that Eric Adams is going to be selling out immigrant New Yorkers in order to keep himself out of prison,” says Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition.
One of the many other dangers is Trump’s threat to dismantle the federal Department of Education, a move that could cost the city’s public schools $2 billion. Is Adams now too compromised to put up a fight?
