A lawyer who was asked to offer independent arguments on the U.S. Justice Department’s motion to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York told a judge on Friday that he should end the prosecution, but that he should not let the government hold the charges over the mayor’s head.
The lawyer, Paul D. Clement, said the judge should not allow the Trump administration to use the prospect of criminal charges to compel Mr. Adams’s support as it tries to organize mass deportations of migrants.
Mr. Clement said he had reached that conclusion in the face of the extraordinary circumstances of the government’s motion.
Prosecutors had argued that dismissal was necessary not because the case was weak but because it was hindering the mayor from assisting in President Trump’s immigration agenda. The motion’s provision allowing the Justice Department to reinstate charges against the mayor led Mr. Adams’s critics to argue that he would be more beholden to Mr. Trump than to his constituents.
Mr. Clement made his arguments in a 33-page brief filed with the judge, Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan — the latest chapter in a legal and political crisis that has called into question the probity and independence of federal prosecutions under Mr. Trump.
Mr. Clement, a political conservative, was the U.S. solicitor general during President George W. Bush’s administration and has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court.
The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York had aggressively prosecuted Mr. Adams, a Democrat, ever since he was indicted last year on bribery, fraud and other counts. After the change in administrations, the Justice Department shifted positions and ordered the Southern District’s top prosecutor, Danielle R. Sassoon, to seek the dismissal.
She refused and quit, leading to a cascade of resignations by other prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington, while several of Mr. Adams’s campaign opponents called for him to step down.
A top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, filed the dismissal motion with Mr. Adams’s support. With no party opposing the motion, Judge Ho appointed Mr. Clement to help with his decision-making “via an adversarial process.”
Judge Ho had made it clear that judges have little leeway in reviewing such motions and may deny them only where they are “clearly contrary to manifest public interest.”
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.