Excerpts From the Judge’s Order Dropping Charges Against Eric Adams

Although he granted the federal government’s request to drop the case, the judge harshly criticized its reasoning in seeking the dismissal.

Federal District Judge Dale E. Ho on Wednesday issued a 78-page ruling that dismissed the criminal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.

In his decision, Judge Ho granted a motion by the Justice Department to drop the charges but denied its request to allow them to be resurrected later, saying that doing so would improperly allow the federal government to hold that threat over the mayor’s head.

The judge also excoriated the Trump administration, saying its arguments in favor of dismissing the case had been made largely under false pretenses and that its actions ran contrary to the country’s tradition of equal justice for all. And while the judge did not conclude that there had been an explicit quid pro quo — in which the mayor’s case would be dropped in exchange for aiding the president’s immigration crackdown — he wrote that the circumstances suggested as much.

He also rejected the administration’s claims that Manhattan prosecutors who resigned rather than drop the charges had done anything wrong.

Here are five quotations drawn from Judge Ho’s decision, lightly edited for clarity and to remove legal jargon.

If in fact D.O.J.’s immigration enforcement rationale amounts to a quid pro quo to extract policy concessions from the Mayor, then it is difficult to imagine a more egregious example of the kind of prosecutorial harassment [that the rule requiring judges to approve criminal dismissals] is intended to guard against.