President Donald Trump said Friday that he wasn’t involved in the resignation of Department of Justice prosecutors involved in the federal case against Democrat New York Mayor Eric Adams, and suggested they would have been dismissed anyway in the coming days.
Six senior Department of Justice officials, including Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, resigned Thursday rather than comply with a directive from acting Deputy Attorney General Eric Bove's order to dismiss the case. A seventh prosecutor with the case resigned Friday. The DOJ then formally asked a New York court to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams.
“I don’t know about it,” Trump said at the Oval Office, according to The Hill. “Obviously, I’m not involved in that, but I would say this. If they had a problem — and these are mostly people from the previous administration, you understand. So, they weren’t going to be there anyway. They were all going to be gone or dismissed … because what you do is you come in, and you put new people in.”
Under new presidential administrations, it is typical for most of the 93 U.S. attorneys from the previous administration to resign and their deputies serve in an acting capacity until a replacement is nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
“So, when you say resigned, they were gonna be gone anyway,” Trump said. “But I know nothing about the individual case. I know that they didn’t feel it was much of the case. They also felt that it was unfair with the election.”
Adams was charged in September under Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York who was appointed by Joe Biden, according to The Hill. The indictment alleged Adams accepted and sought bribes throughout much of his political career, dating to at least 2014 and continuing through his 2021 mayoral campaign and his tenure as mayor. Adams has pleaded not guilty and denied any wrongdoing.
Trump has often compared Adams’s legal plight to his own, stating both were victims of political prosecutions by Joe Biden’s Department of Justice. Trump reportedly said he predicted that Adams would be charged once the mayor complained about the impacts illegal immigrants were having on his city and how the Biden administration should provide funding to deal with crisis.
Trump also said in December he would be open to pardoning Adams upon his return to the White House.
Adams and Tom Homan, Trump’s point man on mass deportations and border security, appeared together on Fox News on Friday morning, according to The Hill. Homan referenced an “agreement” with Adams on illegal immigration and suggested he would pester Adams if he did not follow through.
Adams issued a statement Friday denying there was any quid pro quo regarding the agreement and the charges against him being dropped.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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