Ahead of Wednesday’s hearing over the Trump Justice Department’s bid to dismiss New York Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption indictment, DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle posted a social media thread critiquing the legal theory of the case brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
While a top DOJ official publicly criticizing fellow prosecutors in a pending case adds to the surreal nature of the Adams affair, Mizelle’s thread might be even more notable for potentially contradicting the DOJ’s own stance for how exactly it wants the case to be dismissed.
Recall that Trump’s acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, said he wants to dismiss the case “without prejudice.” That would let the administration revive the case later on, thus allowing President Donald Trump to maintain political leverage over the Democrat, Adams, whose help Trump wants on immigration enforcement in the city.
Yet, if Mizelle is correct that the case is so legally problematic that it should never have been brought in the first place, then he’s effectively making the case that it should never be brought again. Without saying so explicitly, Mizelle is making the case for dismissing it “with prejudice,” which would leave the administration without the political leverage that a “without prejudice” dismissal would provide. His social media thread discussed “[t]he legal theories underpinning SDNY’s case and the particularly expansive reading of public corruption law adopted by the prosecutors in this action.” It surveyed Supreme Court precedent that sides with public corruption defendants and concluded that, “Given the history, DOJ had to decide — among other issues — whether to keep going down a road that the Supreme Court has viewed with skepticism on numerous occasions. Dismissing the prosecution was absolutely the right call.” (I previously wrote about this high court phenomenon in connection with Adams’ case.)
Meanwhile, Bove’s memo to Danielle Sassoon (who, along with other prosecutors, resigned rather than dismiss the case) said the DOJ reached the dismissal conclusion “without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based, which are issues on which we defer to the U.S. Attorney’s Office at this time.” Bove’s motion that U.S. District Judge Dale Ho is considering on Wednesday said the government “concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City” — where Adams is up for re-election. The motion also said Bove concluded that continuing the case would disrupt Adams’ “ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
Of course, explicitly basing the dismissal on concerns about the merits or theory of the case would raise the question: Why not move to dismiss the case with prejudice? It’s a question that Ho might have for Bove anyway, but it’s certainly one raised by Mizelle’s critique. Indeed, even if the DOJ were to win a dismissal without prejudice, wouldn’t it be odd (to say the least) to revive a case whose legal theory has been criticized by a top DOJ official?
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