Staff Reports
New York City’s Democratic Mayor Eric Adams seems to have pulled off a spectacular vanishing act: he’s managed to escape serious corruption charges just as effortlessly as a magician might pull a rabbit from a hat. It raises an eyebrow or two (or maybe even three) to consider that his newfound alliance with Donald Trump has played a role in this peculiar turn of events.
Reports indicate that a top brass at the Department of Justice took it upon themselves to toss out the corruption charges against Adams, which had been looming ominously like a cloud over his head while he geared up for his 2025 reelection campaign. In a move reminiscent of a playground curtailing a game of tag, a memo from the acting Deputy Attorney General suggested that the prosecution didn’t even need to bother evaluating the merits of the case before flicking it away like an errant fly. Their reasoning? The charges were deemed to “improperly interfere” with Adams’s political ambitions. It’s a stunning development that invites skepticism, though the DOJ officials claim that those who initially filed the charges did nothing wrong. Convenient, isn’t it?
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said he ‘never broke the law,’ after the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors in New York to drop corruption charges against him https://t.co/UwyLA4lgpk pic.twitter.com/uzvf9HYY0G
— Reuters (@Reuters) February 12, 2025
What makes this whole scenario even juicier is the timing of Adams’s warm and fuzzy friendship with Trump. The former president, no stranger to the concept of “lawfare,” has gained notoriety for criticising Democrats for their overzealous legal pursuits. Yet here he is, playing nice with the calendar square of the Democratic party, which is even more perplexing considering they previously reveled in their disdain for the orange-haired magnate. Trump’s power plays are a reminder that he doesn’t just leave vengeance to the sidelines; he actively looks to turn the tables on those who cross him. And now, with Adams seemingly under the protective umbrella of Trump’s influence, questions arise about just how cozy the two really are.
This isn’t just about friendship; it’s about the accusations themselves. Adams’s alleged misadventures date back to 2014, involving foreign dignitaries and luxury travels, which sound straight out of a political drama. By 2018, his shenanigans reportedly escalated to actively soliciting illegal campaign donations. It sounds almost like a plot twist from a sitcom, but in this case, it’s terrible reality—unless, of course, the sitcom allows for a character’s lucky twist of fate in the final act, of which Eric Adams just might be the star.
One would think that applauding a mayor from the most liberal city cozying up with a Republican president might break some unwritten rules amongst the Democratic elite, yet somehow it seems that Adams has calculated that siding with Trump could be his best chance at sidestepping serious consequences. Witnessing him at a recent UFC event alongside Trump solidifies the idea that politics has become a game of high-stakes poker, and the mayor may have decided to go all in.
With the DOJ’s dismissive backtrack on the charges, the question now isn’t just whether the nice and cozy friendship with Trump helped Adams dodge the bullet—it’s whether such relationships are becoming a necessary lifeline in today’s political landscape, where friendships might influence who gets to carry on and who gets dragged into the abyss.
