Another prominent Democrat encounters federal accusations, adding complexity to Trump's allegations of bias.
Individual named Adams, who's been accused on five federal charges related to public corruption, has maintained his innocence and claimed he's being singled out due to his political stances.
He voiced his thoughts in a statement soon after the accusations surfaced Wednesday night, prior to the unsealing of the charges on Thursday and a subsequent search of his official residence, Gracie Mansion, by federal authorities.
This argument – that political power often results in legal issues – is a common claim from the few influential people charged with wrongdoing in federal court.
A prominent aspect of former President Trump's third campaign for the White House is his belief that he's been unfairly targeted by the Department of Justice. Trump has promised to utilize the DOJ to pursue his political adversaries if he manages to secure another term in the White House in November.
It's noteworthy that Adams, a Democrat, has been indicted on corruption charges by prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, but this fact doesn't necessarily disprove Trump's argument.
Similarly, the recent conviction of former Senator Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat, after his second trial on corruption and bribery charges, doesn't serve as undeniable proof either. His first trial on different charges ended in a hung jury and a mistrial.
One piece of evidence supporting Trump's "witch hunt" argument is the fact that the same office that's prosecuting Adams and secured a conviction against Menendez decided against pursuing charges against Trump for violating campaign finance law with hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels after he left office in 2021.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected official, was the one who resurrected the case against Trump by figuring out how to apply state law to federal campaign finance violations. Trump was ultimately found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records and will be sentenced in late November, after the presidential election.
Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, did eventually pursue federal indictments against Trump for attempting to overthrow the 2020 presidential election and mishandling classified data.
However, both of these federal prosecutions against Trump have been put on hold in federal courts.
A Trump-appointed judge in Florida dismissed the classified documents case, agreeing with Trump's lawyers that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional.
The election interference prosecution was delayed while the Supreme Court, with a third of its justices appointed by Trump, took its time to decide that Trump should be given special exemption for actions taken during his presidency.
Smith subsequently amended Trump's indictment and filed an outline of the case in Washington, DC. Even if Trump's trial in this case doesn't take place before Election Day, the public may still get a glimpse of the government's case against him before then.
In March, following Menendez's conviction, I updated my ongoing record of federal prosecutions of federal elected officials. This list illustrates a nearly equal distribution of prosecutions nationwide since the turn of the century. Adams' prosecution wouldn't be included on this list since he's a city official. However, the guilty plea of former Republican Representative George Santos would be. The Santos case was handled by a different US attorney's office in New York.
CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig, a former assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York, discussed the decision not to prosecute Trump in his book. Reacting to the news of Adams' indictment on CNN on Wednesday night, Honig pointed out that the Manhattan-based office now prosecuting Adams is located just a few blocks from the mayor's office in Lower Manhattan and has a history of handling corruption cases in recent years.
The Southern District of New York secured a bribery conviction against Sheldon Silver, the former top Democrat in the New York State Assembly, and also Dean Skelos, a Republican who was the majority leader in the New York State Senate.
“Not to be overly optimistic about it, but the track record shows that the only unifying principle is they look at each case individually, and that’s that,” Honig told me in a phone conversation.
However, launching the first prosecution of a sitting New York City mayor leaves no room for error, Honig cautioned.
“If you’re going to charge the sitting mayor of New York City, you better be absolutely certain that you have the evidence on him, because if you don’t, it will be a disaster,” he said on CNN on Wednesday night.
Adams remains defiant in the face of the charges, but they've undoubtedly had an impact on New York politics. Key Democrats, such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called on Adams to resign. It's possible that New York Governor Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, could remove him from office, but she has yet to take any steps in that direction.
The ongoing corruption allegations against Adams, a political figure, have sparked discussions about the intersection of politics and legal matters, much like former Senator Bob Menendez's case.
The unrelenting scrutiny of politicians in power for potential corruption, as seen in Adams' case and Menendez's trials, is a subject of ongoing debate in the realm of politics and law.
