The best way to escape the law in the United States is to be named Donald Trump. The second best way is to suck up to him.
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When it comes to significantly lowering crime statistics in the US, First Felon Donald Trump seems to have come up with a unique approach: Just drop the prosecutions of everybody who supports him (and pardon those who have already been convicted).
And when it comes to this bold strategy, the president is even willing to put partisanship aside.
Just ask New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D), who realized that his best chance of beating federal corruption and bribery charges was to simply try to get on Trump’s good side.
As it turns out, that worked out great for him.
On Monday, Trump’s Department of (Selective) Justice ordered federal prosecutors to drop all charges against Adams, who was indicted in September.
“The Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based,” Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove wrote in a memo sent to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Then why would DOJ ask to have the case dismissed?
Because, after Trump was elected, Adams appealed to the incoming president to be let off the hook.
That scheme always had a high chance of success. Trump is not only susceptible to flattery like few others, but the two men also have a lot in common. In addition to their New York City roots, they were both indicted based on overwhelming evidence, and they share a fondness for conspiracy theories.
In this case, Adams claimed that he was indicted because he dared to speak out against former President Joe Biden’s immigration policy. That is completely nonsensical because the mayor made those comments in 2023 and the investigation that led to the indictment began in 2021; but any conspiracy theory that fits into his view of the world is good enough for Trump.
Therefore, the only politically motivated action taken in this matter just came from his own DOJ.
Bove even admitted as much.
“[The] pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the previous Administration,” he wrote.
In other words, as long as you support Trump or his policies, you can get away with just about anything… like seditious conspiracy or attacking Capitol Police officers.
By the way, The New York Times deserves credit for first reporting on the directive from DOJ to dismiss the case.
However, the paper also deserves our condemnation for how it framed the story.
Specifically, the Times wrote that the order “raises questions about the fair administration of justice during President Trump’s second term.”
That is simply false. This interference into a public corruption case does not raise questions about whether Trump intends to weaponize the Department of Justice; it resoundingly answers them in the affirmative.
