Events in the Trump DOJ-Eric Adams story have moved very quickly this afternoon. Thank you so much to the source who flagged to me the quite public but unremarked on information that allowed me to be one of the few public voices noting SDNY appeared to be defying the Trump DOJ’s demand to drop the charges against Mayor Adams. I will return later to the stunning revelation contained in Danielle Sassoon’s letter to AG Pam Bondi in which she reveals that she witnessed Emil Bove negotiating an explicit quid-pro-quo in which Adams agreed to provide political and policy assistance to Donald Trump in exchange for dropping the criminal charges against him. In that same meeting Bove reprimanded a member of Sassoon’s team who was memorializing the meeting in written notes and had those notes confiscated. That’s consciousness of guilt if I ever saw it. But for now I want to discuss the tenure of Adams as mayor of New York and whether Gov. Kathy Hochul should remove him from office, something the state constitution gives her the power to do.
Ever since news of the criminal investigation into Adams became public, voices have been calling on him to either resign or be removed from office. Those voices grew louder when he was indicted last September. Before Monday I never agreed with those calls. Adams is a duly elected mayor and he is innocent of the crimes charged until proven guilty. In my mind it’s simply not warranted and may not even be legitimate for Hochul to do this, notwithstanding the power she holds to do so.
That all changed on Monday when we learned — though we didn’t yet have the explicit proof we got today — that President Trump had set up an arrangement in which he was essentially blackmailing the mayor into letting ICE run free through the city in exchange for his freedom. We now know — not terribly surprisingly — that this is a deal Adams happily entered into or negotiated. But that doesn’t change the essential point: the mayor’s will is no longer his own. It also doesn’t matter whether you support giving ICE the keys to the city. What matters is that the mayor’s will is no longer his own. He’s controlled by Donald Trump.
Now, no elected official ever acts uninfluenced by others. No person does. But Donald Trump controls Adams’ freedom. That’s totally different. As I said yesterday, there might as well be a hostage taker holed up in Gracie Mansion with a gun to the mayor’s head. This is no longer about Mayor Adams or what he might have done in the past or what crimes he might be guilty of. The injured party is the people of New York City. The people of New York elected and are entitled to a mayor who controls his own will, who is free to make his own decisions. They currently do not have one. New Yorkers didn’t elect Donald Trump to be mayor. But under the current arrangement, he is the mayor. The governor has a responsibility to restore democratic governance to the city by removing the mayor from office.
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