Eric Adams should not be mayor of New York City today. He shouldn’t have been mayor yesterday, or the day before that. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul should have used her authority to start the process of removing him on September 26, 2024, when the federal government unsealed an indictment alleging a raft of crimes Adams allegedly committed.
Among those crimes included taking bribes, soliciting illegal campaign contributions and taking improper and illegal benefits from foreign nationals. According to the feds, Adams committed the crimes both as Brooklyn Borough president and then as mayor.
Hochul could have argued then that Adams would necessarily and understandably be distracted from carrying out his duties in leading the nation’s largest city. Of course, the mayor would need to focus on his legal defense and staying out of prison.
But Hochul, certainly with an eye on her own re-election and on what removing Adams might mean for those prospects, didn’t pull that trigger. Adams strutted around, proclaiming his innocence and castigating those who investigated him and ultimately secured his indictment. It was all so very Trumpian.
Almost five months went by as New York City had a distracted, scandal-tarred mayor, and Hochul did nothing to address that problem.
Then Trump acted. His Justice Department ordered that the charges against Adams be dropped. The order wouldn’t just be a blanket dropping of the charges, though. The feds reserved the right to bring them back at any time, lest Adams fail to toe the Trump administration line on illegal immigration.
It was a dark arts masterstroke, immediately making Adams the Trump administration’s … fill-in-the-blank. No one in Trump World could fail to delight in what the move gave them - a Black man in high office, prostrated before them, powerless to do anything but their bidding, allowed only to ask how high when the administration ordered him to jump.
The move accomplished another feat, too. It boxed in Hochul. Before, she could argue that the mayor needed to be removed because he faced an active legal case against him. Now, there is no active legal case against the mayor.
It’s only the sickening prospect of Adams out there steppin’ and fetchin’ for the Trumpers that has moved Hochul. But, without an active case against the mayor, a Hochul move to remove Adams from office now could not be seen as anything but political, appeasement for those who long ago wanted him gone.
There was a moment when Hochul had a legit, perfectly reasonable rationale for ending the city’s Adams nightmare. And she missed it.
Black leaders in New York City might well tell the governor in the next few days it’s OK to nuke Adams’ stint as mayor. But Adams should have been long gone by now. An Eric Adams out of office would simply be a criminal defendant hoping for some federal consideration without the power of his old office to offer up as tribute.