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Judge Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan has yet to respond to the government’s request to dismiss the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams.
Feb. 17, 2025Updated 11:49 a.m. ET
The Manhattan judge overseeing the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams will be in the spotlight this week after a standoff between federal prosecutors and the Justice Department over a directive to drop the charges against the mayor.
The order, issued last Monday by Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, caused a cascade of resignations and days of drama as several prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request asking the judge to dismiss the case. The judge, Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan, must now decide how to respond.
The law gives judges almost no ability to refuse a government request to drop criminal charges. But Mr. Adams’s case may challenge those limits and that precedent.
Mr. Adams was indicted in September on charges of bribery, fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and conspiracy as part of a scheme involving the Turkish government. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have vehemently defended the case and recently hinted at the possibility of additional charges. Judge Ho has denied repeated requests by Mr. Adams, who has pleaded not guilty, to dismiss the case.
In the motion that Mr. Bove filed on Friday, the government requested that Mr. Adams’s case be dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again in the future. The decision to seek dismissal of the case had nothing to do with its strength, Mr. Bove has said. He has argued that the prosecution was politically motivated and was impeding Mr. Adams’s ability to cooperate with President Trump’s immigration policies.
As of early Monday morning, Judge Ho had not responded to the government’s filing.
Claims made in a resignation letter last week by the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, might prompt Judge Ho to call a hearing with the parties to ask questions about the government’s stated reasons for the dismissal request.
