The City Politic: David Freedlander

Eric Adams in Isolation The mayor maintains all is well as City Hall becomes a ghost town.

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Outside federal court downtown on February 19.

ON FEBRUARY 10, Eric Adams was on his way to meet John Catsimatidis, the billionaire supermarket magnate and friend of Donald Trump's, at century-old midtown steakhouse Gallagher's when word came that the Department of Justice was looking to end its corruption case against him. "It looked like a thousand pounds of bricks were off his shoulder," Catsimatidis said.

In the ensuing days, chaos was ignited in City Hall. The DoJ memo stated explicitly that it was seeking to drop the charges so Adams could assist the administration in carrying out its policies, particularly as related to crime and immigration. The prosecutors retained the right to pick up the case again, if they chose to, after the November mayoral election: Adams, it seemed, was on the hook to do as he was told. His half-dozen Democratic challengers in the upcoming primary charged that he was serving at the pleasure of Trump, and he did little to dispel the accusation, meeting with border czar Tom Homan a few days later, then sitting on the Fox & Friends couch with him the next morning. When Homan said he would be “up his butt” if the mayor didn’t meaningfully curb illegal immigration, Adams laughed.