Judge in Adams Case Faces Demands to Continue the Prosecution

As Judge Dale E. Ho considers the Justice Department’s request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor, former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.

Judge Dale E. Ho, who is overseeing the foundering corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, is facing a storm of demands that he look deeply into the federal government’s reasons for seeking to drop the prosecution.

On Monday night, three former U.S. attorneys from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut filed a brief asking the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case was in the public interest or merely a pretext for securing the mayor’s cooperation with the administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Earlier Monday, Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group, filed a letter with the judge asking that he deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case, which the group called part of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain.” The organization also asked the judge to consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the case in court.

And the New York City Bar Association, which has more than 20,000 lawyers as members, said Monday that the order by a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, to Danielle R. Sassoon, who was the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to dismiss the case “cuts to the heart of the rule of law.” The organization called for a “searching inquiry” into facts of what happened.

The legal and political crisis encompasses both New York’s City Hall and the U.S. Department of Justice, calling into question Mr. Adams’s future as well as the independence and probity of federal prosecutions.

Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April. But last week, Mr. Bove caused a cascade of resignations — including Ms. Sassoon’s — as prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply with his order. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request that Judge Ho will now consider.