Judge Dale E. Ho will hear the government’s rationale for its request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor. Former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.
Judge Dale E. Ho will hear the government’s rationale for its request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor. Former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.
Judge Dale E. Ho will hear the government’s rationale for its request to stop the corruption case against New York’s mayor. Former U.S. attorneys are asking him to investigate.
Judge Dale E. Ho, who on Wednesday will hold a hearing in the foundering corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, is facing a storm of demands that he look deeply into the federal government’s reasons for seeking to drop the prosecution.
On Monday night, three former U.S. attorneys from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut filed a brief asking the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case was in the public interest or merely a pretext for securing the mayor’s cooperation with the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.
Earlier in the day, Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group, asked the judge to deny the Justice Department’s motion, which it called part of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain.” The organization asked the judge to consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the case.
And the New York City Bar Association, with more than 20,000 lawyers as members, said in a statement that the order by a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, “cuts to the heart of the rule of law” and asked for a “searching inquiry” into the facts.
On Tuesday morning, Judge Ho set a hearing for 2 p.m. Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to discuss the reasons for the government’s motion and the procedure for resolving it.
The judge, in a two-page order, offered no hint about his position and made it clear that under a federal rule, the executive branch was “the first and presumptively the best judge” of whether to drop a prosecution.