The judge cancels the trial of New York Mayor Eric Adams

New York – A federal judge canceled on Friday the corruption trial for the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, and appointed a lawyer to advise the court on the controversial request from the Department of Justice to withdraw charges against the Democrat.

The written order of Judge Dale E. Ho means that he will not decide before mid -March if he will grant the dismissal of the case against the mayor in conflict of the largest city in the nation.

On Friday, HO said he appointed Paul Clement, a former Attorney General of the United States under President George W. Bush, to present arguments about the request for the fall of the Government.

The judge pointed out that the courts are usually “helped in their decision -making through our adverse test system, which can be particularly useful in cases that present patterns of unusual facts or in cases of great public importance.”

He said that an audience on Wednesday had no “adverse evidence in the government’s position”, and the absence was important to designate Clement to help the judge reach a conclusion.

At the audience, Attached to the United States Attorney General Emil Bove He defended his request to leave the charges, saying that they were too close to the Adams re -election campaign and distracted from the mayor’s assistance to the priorities of the law and order of the Trump administration.

Adams confirmed at the hearing that he knew that the charges could be reinstated later, a characteristic of the request that has led some legal experts to speculate that the mayor can only escape the trial if he helps Trump’s plans to round out the New Yorkers that are in the country illegally. .

Adams was accused in September for charges that accepted more than $ 100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and travel advantages of a Turkish official and others who sought to buy influence while he was president of Brooklyn County. He faces multiple challengers in the June Democratic primaries. He declared himself innocent and insisted that he is innocent.

HO said he wanted all parties and Clement to address the legal standard to dismiss charges, if a court can consider the materials beyond the motion itself and under what circumstances additional procedural steps and greater investigation were needed.

He also said he wants to know when dismissal is appropriate without the ability to restore charges. Established a report deadline for March 7. The oral arguments, if necessary, would be March 14.

In his order on Friday, HO said that Clement could review a 1977 case in which a judge rejected the government’s demand to dismiss a case.

The law professor at the University of Richmond, Carl Tobias, said that Clement was a conservative lawyer, a sensible option to be a neutral advisor for a recently appointed judge whose previous experience was mainly civil matters.

Late on Thursday, three former American lawyers, from New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, He sent a letter Urge HO to “listen to the government and the accused by deciding on the next appropriate steps.”

In a letter to Ho friday, Adams’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, cited the comments of Pam Bondi’s attorney general, Thursday’s comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the accusation against Adams was “incredibly weak” and needed to be farewell to end the “weapons of the government.” He urged Ho to dismiss charges based on “evidence and law.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comments.

Adams should not attend future hearings, said the judge.

That could help mitigate some political damage for Adams without the show of the apparitions in court while trying to convince the public that the case does not distract him from directing the city.

Adams has tried to project calm as questions about their independence have caused a political crisis for him.

This week, four of its main deputies resigned. Governor Kathy Hochul announced that for now she had decided not to withdraw Adams from office, but would propose legislation to improve the state supervision of the City Council as a way to restore confidence with New Yorkers.

Bove’s initial application last week to the then Interim to the United States Prosecutor’s Office, Danielle Sassoon, to withdraw charges against Adams was rejected, and resigned, accusing Bove of hanging a quid pro quo that would ensure the help of Adams in the Immigration struggle in exchange for dismissal of your criminal. case.

Another prosecutor, do scotten, told Bove in a renunciation letter that would take a “fool” or a “coward” to meet Bove’s demand, “but it would never be me.”

In total, seven prosecutors, including five high -ranking prosecutors in the Washington Department of Justice, had resigned before Bove made the dismissal request himself, along with two other Washington prosecutors.

– The associated press writers Jennifer Peltz, Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington and Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York, contributed to this story.