New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) was seen laughing with President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan as he addressed “quid pro quo” allegations following the Monday dismissal of federal his corruption charges, calling the accusations “silly.”
“Imagine him going inside saying that the only way Mayor Adams is going to assist in immigration, which I was calling for since 2022, is if you drop the charges,” he told Fox News’s “Fox and Friends” in an interview Friday. “That’s quid pro quo. That’s a crime.”
“It took her three weeks to report in front of her a criminal action,” the mayor said, referring to interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon, who prosecuted the case. “Come on, this is silly.”
Adams has denied striking a deal to help the government to make good on the Trump administration’s promises to carry out mass deportations. Still, he met with Homan on Thursday where he agreed to sign an executive order granting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents access to Rikers Island to identify violent criminals there.
The Justice Department (DOJ) earlier this week ordered federal prosecutors to dismiss the charges against Adams, who has seemingly cozied up with the president in recent months as his bribery trial set for April inched closer.
Sassoon resigned earlier this week after the memo, led by DOJ Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, directed her to drop the case.
“Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” she wrote Wednesday in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. “Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams’s assistance in enforcing federal law, that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s memo.”
“That is especially so given Mr. Bove’s comparison to the Bout prisoner exchange, which was quite expressly a quid pro quo, but one carried out by the White House, and not the prosecutors in charge of Bout’s case,” Sassoon added.
The Republican prosecutor said the gesture conflicted with the oath of office she took before becoming Manhattan’s top prosecutor, which prompted her departure.
Her resignation comes just months after her predecessor Damien Williams stepped down following Trump’s election win.
