Judge to Scrutinize Adams’s Dealings With Trump’s Justice Department

A federal judge on Wednesday is expected to scrutinize the Trump administration’s extraordinary attempt to abandon corruption charges against New York City’s mayor, a decision that shook the legal community and led to calls for the mayor’s resignation.

The judge, Dale E. Ho, ordered the Washington prosecutors who sought a dismissal of the case last week to appear in a Manhattan courtroom to address the Justice Department’s effort to shut down the case, just months before the mayor, Eric Adams, was scheduled to go to trial.

Last week, the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, directed prosecutors to seek an end to Mr. Adams’s prosecution. Mr. Bove said explicitly that his directive was based not on the case’s legal merits. The case, he said, was detracting from the mayor’s ability to aid President Trump’s program of mass deportation.

At least seven prosecutors resigned rather than obey, including Danielle R. Sassoon, the interim head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

In a two-page order on Tuesday, Judge Ho told prosecutors and Mr. Adams’s lawyers to be prepared to address, among other things, the reason the government was seeking to throw out the case and “the procedure for resolution” of its request. That phrasing, legal experts said, suggested that the judge was unlikely to rubber-stamp the government’s effort.

The judge acknowledged that a federal rule says the executive branch is best suited to decide whether to drop a prosecution and that a judge should not meddle unless a dismissal is “clearly contrary to manifest public interest.”