The Supreme Court Might Get Eric Adams Off the Hook

There are several reasons for that, but a big one is that over the last 25 years, the Supreme Court has steadily eroded federal public anti-corruption law, and Congress — whose members have been among the principal beneficiaries — has sat idly by. As a result, it would be a mistake to assume that Adams is doomed to a conviction, at least based on what we currently know about the case.

Adams still faces grave legal danger. It’s very possible that the indictment could generate new leads and cooperators for the government, which is not unusual, and that could in turn lead to more federal criminal charges against Adams. Prosecutors themselves flagged this possibility at a court hearing Wednesday.

But the filing of the indictment last week, which was done under no apparent time pressure, suggests that this is the best that prosecutors currently have against Adams after several years of investigating. And on its face, it is not exactly the most damning account of public corruption in the country’s history.

The indictment contains five criminal counts but effectively alleges three overlapping theories of criminal misconduct.

First, prosecutors allege that Adams solicited and accepted straw donations from prohibited sources, including foreign nationals, for his 2021 mayoral campaign. The indictment does not provide an aggregate figure, but a close read suggests that the total sum may be in the low- to mid-tens of thousands of dollars.

Second, prosecutors allege that Adams engaged in wire fraud — that he effectively defrauded the city’s taxpayers — by falsely reporting to the city’s campaign finance board that he was in compliance with relevant campaign finance laws. Prosecutors claim that if Adams had told the truth, he would not have been able to receive any of the $10 million in public matching funds that he received during the cycle.

Third — and most significantly — prosecutors allege that Adams was bribed by Turkish officials.

In particular, they claim that Adams received roughly $100,000 worth of free travel perks (fancy hotels, flight upgrades and the like) from 2016 through 2021, and that in exchange for those sorts of benefits, Adams pressured city fire department officials to fast-track the opening of a Turkish consular building in downtown Manhattan in the fall of 2021 ahead of a visit by the Turkish president, despite concerns that the building was unsafe. At the time, Adams was still just the Brooklyn borough president, but he had already won the Democratic primary for the mayoral race, all but ensuring he’d be the city’s next leader.

The first two theories are essentially campaign finance violations. And as to the bribery charge, even if all of the allegations are true, Adams is so far only accused of engaging in a single official act — pushing through the fire inspection — in exchange for the various perks that he received.

There is a reason that the bribery charge is, at least at first blush, a fairly awkward fit for the allegations here.

Many years ago, prosecutors might have claimed that Adams was guilty of accepting gifts that were then known as “status gratuities.” Those are payments to public officials that are made to them because they hold public office — not necessarily tied to requests for specific official acts. You can think of them as gifts that are designed to butter up the public official, or perhaps to thank them for some past decisions that helped the gift-giver.

Prosecutors, however, could not advance a theory like that against Adams because of at least two Supreme Court decisions. Twenty-five years ago, the court ruled unanimously that prosecutors could not use the status gratuity theory anymore because they needed to demonstrate a connection between the gifts and specific official acts undertaken by the public official. Then just this past summer, the six Republican appointees on the court held that there actually is no federal ban on gratuities for state and local officials like Adams. (On a perhaps related note, two of the Republican appointees have themselves been accused of accepting millions of dollars’ worth of gifts from people trying to influence them.)

It is very possible that federal prosecutors might still have pursued the bribery theory against Adams regardless. Gratuities cases do not pack the legal or political punch of a bribery case: The potential penalties are far lower, and relatively few people outside the legal profession could even tell you what a “gratuity” is. A “bribe” sounds much worse.

But the court’s decision over the summer was just the latest in a decades-long trend that has resulted in the hollowing out of federal anti-corruption laws and which have limited prosecutors’ options in cases of misconduct by public officials. Congress, meanwhile, has essentially acquiesced to these rulings even though they could plug these gaps by passing new anti-corruption legislation.

So far, Adams has largely rebuffed his critics with his standard bravado. “When people say, ‘You need to resign,’” he said over the weekend, “I say, ‘I need to reign.’”

And an indictment, of course, is just the start of a criminal prosecution, not the end. There is no way to predict with certainty whether Adams will ultimately be convicted of the charged offenses despite the very attention-grabbing nature of the allegations and the resulting public uproar.

At trial, a great deal is likely to come down to the credibility of the government’s cooperating witnesses and the strength of their testimony concerning (1) Adams’ knowledge of the straw donations and (2) the extent to which the fire inspection request was specifically tied to the perks that Adams received from the Turkish government.

But as things stand now, Adams has a solid fighting chance on the bribery charge. He does face tougher odds at beating the campaign finance-related charges, but even there he is not guaranteed to lose. He may plead some combination of ignorance and sloppiness, and perhaps a sympathetic juror will refuse to convict and it will lead to a mistrial. If he does get convicted on just the lesser charges, he would have pretty good arguments for avoiding a lengthy prison term — and perhaps any prison time altogether.

At the risk of stating the obvious, none of this excuses Adams’ alleged misconduct as either a political or ethical matter. Government officials should not be accepting tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and perks from anyone — much less foreign interests.

Adams was already on track for a rough reelection effort next year, and the indictment might finish him off. But as a strictly legal matter, it would be unwise to count him out just yet.