Tumult inside Trump's DOJ: What it means for rule of law in the U.S.
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This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker, in for Meghna Chakrabarty. Of all the controversies of the four-week-old Trump White House, some say one stands out for its potential consequences, the case of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. It's a complicated story that began with the Democratic mayor being charged with corruption during the Biden administration. The mayor denied the accusations and agreed to a trial date later this year. But last week,

Officials with Trump's Justice Department ordered federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop the case against Adams. Why? The acting Deputy Attorney General, Emile Beauvais, who's President Trump's former criminal defense attorney, said prosecuting Adams would harm the mayor's ability to cooperate with Trump's immigration policies.

A flurry of federal prosecutors resigned in protest, including some who had been staunch supporters of President Trump. One prosecutor wrote a letter to the Justice Department saying, quote,

I expect you will eventually find someone who's enough of a fool or enough of a coward to file your motion, but it was never going to be me, end quote. A judge in New York held a hearing on the case this week and is now reviewing it. So we're going to spend this next hour talking about what's happening within Trump's Justice Department and the

broader implications for the rule of law. We're having this conversation Friday morning, and because this is a fast-moving story, things could change throughout the day. Joining me from New York City is Ryan Goodman. He's a law professor at New York University's Law School. Welcome to On Point. Thank you for having me. So let's just start with how big of a deal is it, do you think, for the Justice Department to move to dismiss this case against Mayor Adams?

It's fairly gigantic because the explicit reason given, even in writing, by the acting deputy attorney general is this idea that the mayor is good for the Trump administration in his support for their immigration policy.

On its face of it, it says that. And then behind the scenes, there are strong allegations, in fact, coming from the former acting U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York who resigned. And the accusation is that this was an explicit quid pro quo between

And we should say that Mayor Adams has denied that there was any quid pro quo here. But one thing I want to point to in this apparent issue is that the case that was filed against him,

is being or the Justice Department is requesting that this case be dismissed without prejudice, right? So that means that the Justice Department can prosecute if it decides to in the future, essentially holding this over Adam's head. That seems to be a key issue here, right? What does it mean when a case is being dismissed without prejudice?

So it is absolutely key. I think it's really important that people focus not only on how the Justice Department is being used to drop a criminal investigation, but at the same time, or prosecution, but at the same time, as you said, to hold over the mayor's head the process.

prospect, the easy prospect that could just bring back the charges. And that was made clear in the court proceedings earlier this week so that Judge Hale did in fact say, sorry, Judge Ho did in fact say, do you agree, Justice Department, that you could bring back charges at any point in time?

And they said yes. And then he made sure that the mayor understood that as well. So that's really overhanging his head. Since this seems to be based, the decision is to dismiss the case is based on his performance on immigration policy. He has to worry that if he doesn't perform well,

appropriately that that's maybe why they then decide to return the charges and bring him back to court. Right, right. So let's talk about that hearing and exactly what happened there. As you said, you were in the courtroom and, you know, I found the lead written in the New York Times about that hearing kind of astonishing, you know, basically saying the Justice Department suggesting that the White House is justified in dismissing

this corruption case against a public official if the official cooperates with the president's political agenda. And as you said, it was blatantly stated that this was happening here. Now, the step is when the Justice Department seeks to dismiss, it goes before a judge, in this case, Judge Hohn, New York. What happened in the courtroom? So in the courtroom, there was some anticipation that the judge would then

probe below the surface to not only explore whether it was appropriate to dismiss the case on the grounds that the government had given, but also whether or not there was this quid pro quo. And remarkably, that did not happen.

And the judge did not probe very far. He did not ask deeper questions about the quid pro quo. He did not ask deeper questions about what was in the former acting U.S. attorney, Danielle Sassoon's letter to the attorney general, making these arguments that she understood it to be a quid pro quo. Nor did the judge even probe on the very question of

oh my goodness, we're in a situation in which eight prosecutors have resigned because they were unwilling to be the one to submit the motion to dismiss. And that was what was kind of extraordinary about the hearing this week, that none of that happened. But why didn't it happen? Wasn't that the point? Yeah. So there are two rationales that I can think of as to why it did not happen.

The first is that maybe Judge Ho is simply holding his first hearing. He laid out the record in great methodical detail. And by the record, I mean exactly what is the formal official position of Mr. Bove in the Justice Department. And he could have a second hearing. And at the very end of the hearing, he in fact said,

probes a different kind of a question, which is should he not appoint an amicus, basically a third party, to present the other side? Because before him are the prosecution and the defense counsel presenting the very same set of arguments. And that's a bit of a cliffhanger. So maybe Judge Hale was... Sorry, I did that again. Judge Ho was...

just setting this up in his first hearing and he seems like a very methodical, careful judge. That's the first one. The second one is, the second rationale could be something very different, which is simply that the judge understands that his discretion here is limited, that under the rule it is true that the federal government needs the permission of the court to dismiss the prosecution, but that is very rare, that is very exceptional.

And maybe he has decided that at the end of the day, he is not going to deny their motion to dismiss. In fact, he'll dismiss the case. And because of that, he is a new judge. He does not have criminal prosecution experience. He maybe has just decided.

I'm not going to go through a process of exploration and fact-gathering, et cetera, when I basically know I have such limited discretion. Now, I would think that that's wrong. If I were advising him, I'd say you have a duty to explore what's going on here because it is such an extraordinary case. We don't have situations like this. It's hard to even think of a historical analog.

And in fact, the test for as exercise of discretion is does the dismissal violate, clearly violate public interest? And the courtroom is full. It's overflowed by the public. These are on the headlines of all the major newspapers and the like because of how dramatic it is, because these career prosecutors thought that they had absolutely no choice but to resign. And I think it would be...

even under just the pure legal test, let alone where we are as a country, I think it would be incumbent upon the judge to explore further and to do something to at least establish a record, even if he ends up finally deciding that he would accept the motion to dismiss. So basically, let me just make sure that I'm understanding what you're saying correctly. In a typical case like this, say if the Justice Department was seeking to dismiss a case,

it would typically be that the judge would sign off and defer to the Justice Department because it might usually involve something like, look, we don't have enough evidence to go forward. We're not going to win. The judge says, OK, we can drop this case. But this, because it's so atypical, the judge is acknowledging limited discretion in previous cases. But what you're saying is because this case is not typical, the judge could look to do something different. Is that right?

Absolutely. This is the most unusual case. And if it is only in exceptional circumstances that a judge would exercise that authority, we're in those circumstances, essentially. I don't think the legal community would bat an eye if he said, you know, I need to explore this further. I need an amicus to present the other side. That itself is not totally unusual. So,

In such an exceptional case, he should at least take that step, and he could take the further step of deciding to deny the motion to dismiss. Okay. So the judge didn't do a lot of probing, didn't look for evidence, didn't do some of the things that a judge may have typically done in a hearing like this. What did the judge do? What did happen? What stood out in your mind?

So one of the things the judge did do is go through a routine set of questions with the mayor under oath. And he said to the mayor, look, don't take this essentially personally. These are my routine questions I always ask of any defendant that is essentially waiving some of their rights. And there's a way technically that the mayor would be waiving some of his rights on appeal and things like that and trying to claim attorney fees.

And one of the questions he does ask is, are there any other agreements that you have had with the government that are not reflected in the record? And the mayor says, no. And from that point onward, both sides, both parties are basically saying, you, Judge Ho, have established the record. What is the record? But there's no quid pro quo because the mayor just swore under oath. I'm telling you as Emil Bove, the Justice Department prosecutor, you

that there's no quid pro quo, so you have no basis to explore any further. And so did the defense counsel. The defense counsel said, I'm willing to, you know, somewhat overly dramatic, I'm willing to raise my hand right now and take the oath. So that's what the judge did do in kind of laying out that part of the record. And then he also explored to some degree what the legal theory is on the part of the Justice Department because he said...

Let me just try to understand this. Could a chief commissioner, you wouldn't prosecute them because they may help you in immigration? What if it's a border governor? Same question. And I think there he was pushing them to the limits of what their argument is. OK, well, and we'll talk about this and the resignations of some federal prosecutors in response to the Justice Department moving to dismiss the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. We'll be back after a break. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

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This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker. We're talking about the Justice Department and recent moves to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Ryan Goodman is with us. He's a law professor at NYU. And stay with us a moment, Ryan, because we want to hear from some former federal prosecutors and get their reaction to what's happening with this Eric Adams case in the Justice Department.

We have with us Thomas Dupree, a former deputy assistant attorney general under George W. Bush. Before joining the government, he was on the team that represented George W. Bush in Bush v. Gore. Welcome to On Point, Tom. Thanks for having me. Also with us, Peter Zeidenberg. He spent 17 years as a federal prosecutor where he served in the public integrity section as deputy special counsel in the Scooter Libby case. Peter, thanks for being with us today.

Happy to be here. So, Tom, let's just start with you first. So how do you think that this Eric Adams case and the move to dismiss the corruption case against him affects the Justice Department and federal prosecutors and not just the, you know, attempt to drop this case, but also then the resignations of federal prosecutors in protest?

Well, I think the way this played out sent a message, and I think that was intentional from the top of the Justice Department to not just the prosecutors in New York City, but really throughout the entire department, that these decisions were going to be made from the top. There would not be a lot of room for disagreement.

And from my perspective, you know, I don't like the way it played out, because if you're talking just about the New York prosecutors, I mean, these are two A-plus prosecutors. These are excellent lawyers. They are both conservatives, both clerked on the Supreme Court, one for Justice Scalia, the other for Chief Justice Roberts. And we should just say who they are, right? We're talking about interim U.S. attorneys.

Interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten, right? Those are the two folks that you're talking about that were really the high-profile resignations of the federal prosecutors who left their jobs in protest over this decision, right? Yeah.

That's exactly right. And those are two individuals that we as a nation want serving in the United States Department of Justice. And, you know, they are not kind of, you know, bleeding heart liberals who had a problem ideologically with the Trump administration. They're strong on law enforcement. And so speaking as someone myself who wants very strong law enforcement, I'm

I think it's a real loss to the department, to the nation, that the way this played out resulted in effectively the forced resignation of these two prosecutors, not to mention the additional people in Washington, D.C. Sure, the way it played out. But what about the overall premise here, that the Justice Department is –

presumably looking to drop charges against a political figure so that political figure can carry out White House objectives. I mean, is that really the problem here? Or are you saying it's the way it was done that's more problematic? Well, on the purpose of all of this, I think one thing that was very attractive to a lot of people during Trump's campaign was the idea that we would get politics out of law enforcement. Right.

That there was a sense, at least in conservative circles, that the Biden administration had overstepped in injecting political considerations into law enforcement decisions. And that this sequence of events with Mayor Adams, I think for a lot of people, when they look at it, they can't help but conclude that.

that you have a law enforcement decision being driven by political considerations, which was precisely the opposite principle on which President Trump ran and succeeded getting elected to office again. And what about, though, the dropping of the charges now? Maybe not the initial charging of Eric Adams, but the dropping of the charges. Isn't that politicizing the Justice Department?

And literally saying that you're doing so, so Adams can effectively carry out policies of the White House?

And I think the Justice Department, the leadership, I think may have recognized that that was a mistake on their part to explicitly and tell the judge and in public filings that that was the reason for the dismissal. We saw the attorney general herself say that this was a weak case that wasn't supported by evidence, but that's not the basis on which they asked the judge to dismiss it.

If they thought it was a weak case, they should have just said this is the reason why we're dismissing it. And they also would have dismissed it with prejudice rather than dismiss it without prejudice, leaving it hanging over Mayor Adams like a sort of Damocles that could be used to exact leverage going forward. Right. And in fact, the first memo from Emile Beauvais regarding the dismissal of this case did say,

that the decision to drop the case against Adams was being made without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case was based. So basically saying the case was strong, but we're doing this for other reasons.

Right, right. And look, I mean, if this was the goal, I mean, there are other ways they could have achieved it short of interfering with this decision by the career prosecutors. For example, President Trump could simply have pardoned Mayor Adams. I mean, would that have exacted a political price? Yes, maybe so. And that might be why they decided to go this route. But again, from my perspective, as someone who wants to see strong law enforcement, I don't think that this is handled the right way by the new administration.

Peter Zeidenberg, I want to go to you. What do you think about how this case is being handled and what ramifications it has for federal prosecutors in the Justice Department? Well, it's really a huge black eye and a dark day for the Department of Justice, actually a dark week. And it is a bad portent for what's to come.

It's an overt and blatant politicization of the Justice Department for the reasons you spelled out. They said the reason they're dropping the case is because they want –

Eric Adams to help the administration. And they also made clear, if not quite implicit in that, is if he doesn't play ball, the case is coming back. I mean, it simply could not be more political than that. And, you know, the suggestion that

The original prosecution was political. I just don't understand that. Eric Adams is a Democrat. You have a Democratic administration that began investigating him in 2021, apparently. That same administration prosecuted Senator Menendez. It's same Department of Justice prosecuted the president's son. To me,

It's an indication that the Justice Department was working as it should have, which is they follow the facts and they follow the law and they go get the people they think violated the law. And that's the way it should work. And now, you know, Trump loves to say I'm against the politicization, but that's exactly what he wants to do is he wants to use this as a weapon to

And a sword. So he wants to be able to go after his enemies, which he's made very clear that's his intent. And he wants to use it to protect allies and to force individuals who are under threat to attack.

play ball with him. Tom Dupree, you suggested that the case against Adams was a political one in nature. What do you say to Peter's claims that, you know, he's a Democrat? These charges came during the Biden administration. He's a Democratic mayor of New York. Yes, he may have criticized Biden's immigration policies, but is that what you're saying, that the charges against Adams were politically based because of his criticism of the Biden administration's immigration policies?

No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. I think this case was supported by evidence. I think that the team in New York, I think, very properly looked at the evidence they had gathered about what Mayor Adams had done, his acceptance of gratuities and the like, foreign contributors, and they appropriately brought charges. So, no, I don't view this as kind of a politically driven prosecution. At the same time, I mean, it is true that Adams was, you know, at odds to some extent with the Biden administration,

on immigration and on other issues. So I suspect that that was in the minds of people at the White House. But as far as whether there was an evidentiary basis to bring these charges, I completely trust the judgments of the prosecutors in New York on that. Okay. I want to bring up what the White House has said about this particular case, because it's been, you know, it's certainly taken many twists and turns here.

with the dropping of the case, the hearing, the resignations of the federal prosecutors. But last week, let's first hear this clip we have from President Trump, who said he didn't know anything about what was going on with the case with Eric Adams. And he said this after some prosecutors resigned. Let's listen.

I don't know about it. I mean, obviously, I'm not involved in that. But I would say this, that if they had a problem, and these are mostly people from the previous administration, you understand, so they weren't going to be there anyway. They were going to all be gone or dismissed. And that is President Trump talking about the case with Eric Adams. And for a while, Attorney General Pam Bond.

was not saying a lot about this case. Most of the information was coming from Deputy Attorney General Emile Bove, as we said. But at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, Attorney General Bondi was in an interview, and then she said it really wasn't, the Justice Department wasn't dropping this case against Adams for him to be able to carry out White House policies. It was really a question of the strength of the case. Let's listen.

It was an incredibly weak case to make deportation harder. That's why they did it. They took one of the biggest mayors in the country off the playing field in order to

protect their sanctuary city. This case, it was so incredibly weak. It was about increases in airline tickets, upgrades in airline tickets in his official capacity without getting into all the details of the fact. I don't even think it could survive a verdict.

excuse me, incredibly weak case. That is the weaponization of government. Peter Zidenberg, I wonder what you make of those remarks from Attorney General Bondi about the fact that this was really a weak case, even though initially in the memo explaining reasons to drop the case, the Justice Department said it was not a weak case. So where are we now? What do these comments mean?

That means they're scrambling and trying to make up excuses now. I mean, as you suggested at the outset, if they genuinely believe that there was a weakness in the case, first of all, the Department of Justice doesn't dismiss except in its own

It's almost unheard of to dismiss an indictment that's already been brought simply because they've later decided this is a weak case. I mean, you go to trial and you win some and you lose some. But that decision is made at the time the case is brought.

Unless, you know, a witness dies or new evidence is uncovered, cases don't get dismissed because someone else changes their mind about the strength of the case. And as you've also pointed out,

Beauvais made very clear, he made explicit in his letter to the prosecutors that the decision to drop the case is not being based on any assessment on the strength of the case. I mean, that was in black and white. So, you know, I think that they're being embarrassed now and she's scrambling for excuses that sound more legitimate than...

hey, we want to have this guy and be able to manipulate him to execute our agenda. I guess they decided that didn't sound so good. Right, right. Do you think that this will result in, or maybe not this case, but others like it, because there have been a few other cases where the Justice Department has intervened and sought to drop charges against some political figures, not as big as this. But do you think we'll see more resignations, more protests happening?

within the Justice Department. And I wonder, what does that do for the rule of law? What do you think?

Well, it's so demoralizing. You know, the public integrity section only has about 20 lawyers in it, roughly, maybe two dozen at the most. So basically a third of that office has been forced to resign. So that's devastating. Those are their, you know, colleagues that have worked there for years. And, you know, and the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C.,

resigned on, I think on Wednesday or Thursday, because she was being forced to send a letter to a bank that she thought was totally unsupported and she had to resign. So

And prosecutors generally love their jobs because they are told to do the right thing, do justice, follow the law and follow the principles of federal prosecution. And it's a wonderful feeling to go into court because you are not doing things because your client is asking you to or telling you to or paying you to. You're doing what you think is right. Right.

And when you're told by your bosses to do things that violate your oath, it's not tenable. So it's really demoralizing and it's going to have a really bad effect on the department. And on an individual level, it's just devastating just to lose your job like that because these are not people who are wealthy.

you know, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to get...

fired like that or being forced to resign. Right. Tom Dupree, I wonder what you think. Will there be more resignations? And if there are, what does it mean about who's left in the Justice Department to handle some of these cases? And how should the public continue to have confidence in the Justice Department if the belief might be that the only folks left there are Trump loyalists who will do whatever the president wants, regardless of the legality involved?

Well, I think we are going to see an increasing number of these clashes between the demands of the leadership at the Justice Department and the career prosecutors. And to be fair, that happens in all administrations. When a new administration comes into office, you have career people who resign or who just are not on board with the new president's agenda. This case, though, is different, or this administration, I think, is different in terms of the magnitude of the clash.

you know, the mass resignations. And I do think it probably, it's not going to go away. I think we are going to continue to see this clash play out. One notable aspect of the Adams situation is that this, of course, was a clash over dismissing charges where the career prosecutors felt that they could not ethically dismiss charges that they had brought. I think the clash gets even more focused and acute in situations where career prosecutors are asked to bring charges.

to bring criminal charges against someone. I think there you are going to see increased friction because it would not surprise me at all. I don't think I'm going out on a limb to say that the leadership of the Justice Department, I think, is going to be taking an aggressive approach

to bringing certain prosecutions that many of the career prosecutors may feel uncomfortable with. So I do think that this is probably a foretaste of what is to come. Just a minute left here. Is the rule of law compromised by this aggressive approach and really by the friction here? What would you say, Tom?

I think that people, their faith does get shaken in the rule of law when you see prosecutors resigning, you know, en masse. Again, it's not one-off. It's not a two-off. It's not a situation where you have, you know, kind of, you know,

bleeding heart liberals saying I'm not going to work for Trump. These are strong conservative prosecutors. And I think when the public sees this, I mean, they don't know all the intricacies of these particular cases or the prosecutions or the evidence supporting the Adams indictment. But I think people can't help but draw the conclusion that maybe politics is starting to infiltrate the Justice Department and law enforcement, which is not a good thing for the administration and not a good thing for America.

Tom Dupree, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under George W. Bush, thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me. Also, Peter Zeidenberg, former federal prosecutor who served in the public integrity section. Peter, thanks to you as well. Thank you. We'll talk more about the Eric Adams case and the Justice Department after a break. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

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This is On Point. I'm Deborah Becker. We're talking about President Trump, his Justice Department, and what it means that the department is seeking to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Ryan Goodman is with us. He's a professor of law at NYU Law School. And Ryan, we just heard from two former federal prosecutors about the Eric Adams case.

case, and both of them said that they expect there will be continued reverberations. This will affect other federal prosecutors throughout the country. Also, they said they expect increased friction and an aggressive approach from the Trump White House in terms of cases either that the Justice Department will seek to dismiss or cases that the Justice Department will seek to bring forward. Would you agree with that?

A hundred percent. And I think that this is a piece that comes with other pieces of the puzzle. So just to add in, we recently learned from the Washington Post that the White House has changed a decades-long policy of no contacts with the Justice Department over criminal cases, except in exceptional national security contexts. So that was a post-Watergate arrangement where

administration after administration, Republican, Democratic, would basically pass the exact same policy that there should be no contact with the White House and the Justice Department to prevent political interference. And lo and behold, that's been lifted. We're coming off of the heels of Kash Patel having been confirmed to the FBI as its new director. And, you know, one of the most remarkable pieces that I thought happened in his confirmation hearing is Senator Coons says to him,

Like, who do you answer to? Who is your client, essentially? And Kash Patel says, "Oh, my boss is the Justice Department and their boss is the White House." And Senator Coons says, "That's not the right answer." Like, you're not even given the right answer publicly. The right answer is the Constitution of the American people. At least Pam Bondi said that in her confirmation hearing. And it's not like Kash Patel is on his back heels and then says, "Oh, of course you're right." He just lets it lay there.

And he's obviously a person coming in who has explicitly said things about having something of an enemies list. And that includes members of the media, etc. I guess the only other piece I'd like to add to the prior two guests is I agree it's demoralizing, right?

But I also think there's something else that's happening here, which is it's not just sending a signal to all the prosecutors across the Justice Department. It's sending a signal to all of the federal judges. I'm sure they are all closely watching what's happened. I'm sure they all have read these internal Justice Department letters.

And I think the Justice Department is going to run into some real problems because there will be a level of distrust and skepticism when prosecutions are brought or other actions are taken that are coming from the very same people that...

that don't seem to get what the rule of law guardrails are supposed to be there for. You know, you mentioned this sort of explicit nature, this normalization, really, of what had been, or at least expected to have been, a firewall, right, between the Justice Department and the White House, between law enforcement and the White House, where the

the FBI was supposed to be sort of a separate agency, not just reporting to the president and where there was this no contact policy with the Justice Department. But also, there was a bit of an amazing interview. If we go back to the Eric Adams case for a moment here, last Friday, Adams and the White House border czar, Tom Homan, were on Fox & Friends and they were talking about the

the plan to reopen a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on Rikers Island. And Homan says,

He made it pretty clear on national television that the White House had an agreement with Adams that Adams would help them in their immigration policies or else. Now, I want to play this clip because it really stands out and a lot of people have mentioned it in the coverage of this issue and whether, in fact, there was some agreement between Adams and the White House about this, even though Adams denies it.

So here is the clip from Fox and Friends where Adams and Homan are talking with Fox host Steve Doocy, who starts this piece of tape out. Let's listen. You are sitting today talking about the new alliance between ICE and Adams. So thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Alliance was never severe. And it doesn't come from two.

If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City and we won't be sitting on the couch. I'll be in his office up his butt saying where the hell is the agreement we came to? And I want ICE to deliver. We're going to deliver for the safety of the people of this city.

So that is a clip from Fox & Friends, and we heard the White House borders our Tom Homan there saying, if he doesn't come through, I'll be in his office up his butt saying, where is that agreement we came to? So I wonder, Ryan Goodman, what do you make of that clip? Isn't that almost explicitly saying that there is a quid pro quo? Yes, it is. And it's coming on the heels of all of the news coverage that

showing the letters from the acting deputy attorney general to the Southern District of New York. So he is, in a sense, even just humiliating the mayor on live television because we are all at that point aware of what's been going on behind the scenes. And we're aware of the former acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon's letter, in which she says that

Quote-unquote.

Although Mr. Bovee disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams' assistance in enforcing federal law, that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bovee's memo, end quote. And I completely agree with you that it is normalizing it in the sense that it's just out in the open. And the American Bar Association, which is not a kind of organization that usually gets into the fray, issued a statement of deep concern about

about what's happened here with the Justice Department. And they say that what's happened with the Beauvais letter to the Southern District of New York directing them to drop the charges was, quote-unquote, expressly political. In other words, it's on the very face of the letter. And I think that's what we're dealing with. And it is incumbent upon us all not to

lose track of how absolutely abnormal it is so that this does not become normalized and institutionalized as though this is how the Justice Department is supposed to operate. It's not supposed to operate like this. And I thought, you know, as Americans, in a certain sense, we had that wake-up call with Watergate, but here we are. Right. Well, we'll talk about Watergate in a moment, but first I want to talk about, you know,

A lot of folks have said that the judiciary is sort of the guardrails, right, to make sure that things don't go astray. I wonder where are the guardrails for the judiciary and the Justice Department in a case like this? Yes, you have a judge right now, as you mentioned, Judge Ho, who's looking at this and may or may not be able to creatively respond.

rule on this case, on this motion to dismiss the case against Eric Adams. But what about an inspector general for the Justice Department? Are there any other avenues that, you know, folks could say this can't be done in the Justice Department in order to protect its integrity?

So there is an inspector general in the Justice Department, and surprisingly, in a certain sense, he has actually been left in place. He's not on the list of inspector generals that President Trump has tried to fire. And so he could do a report, but I don't hold out so much hope for it. I mean, the very same individual has been in place for several years, and it generally takes him multiple years before he even issues a report. Right.

So that's – but it's still something. I mean if there's an inspector general investigation, that is still something. Unfortunately, in normal times, we would say that the Congress has an important checking role. What's also conspicuous is the absence of congressional –

activity. You would think in a normal situation they would call potentially Mr. Bove himself, the acting deputy attorney general, or call the prosecutors who resigned to testify before Congress because this is such a grave threat to the Justice Department and its independence. None of that's happening because those who wield the subpoena power

are not seemingly willing to push up against President Trump because it's in Republican control. The Democrats are trying to do that. There's like a quote-unquote an investigation being opened, but that's very weak tea. They don't have subpoena authority. They can't call witnesses.

But it seems as if there are even very conservative Republicans who don't agree with the way this is being handled. Couldn't they try to muster enough votes to do some kind of a congressional investigation? Or you don't think that that would be possible because they still would be too worried about ramifications from the White House?

I'm sure that in their heart of hearts they know this is deeply wrong. I'll put it that way. So at least in that sense, I think that box is checked off. And they can be supported in some respects from like the Wall Street Journal editorial board. The Wall Street Journal editorial board says this is deeply wrong and basically smacks of corruption.

There are other conservative lawyers and commentators who have also come out in the National Review and elsewhere saying this is deeply wrong. So I think there would be support for those Republicans from the conservative legal community, from the Federalist Society, who also see really important conservative lawyers who abide by the rule of law that have just had their careers trashed. And I think we could hear that from Tom as well to see –

rising stars among the Federalist Society, among the lawyers in the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon in particular, and Hagan Skotten. So I think there's reason for them to act to protect those folks and the integrity of the rule of law and maybe, maybe vulnerable Republican members of the House in 2026 would see that this is a place for them to put down a marker if there ever is one.

Now, New York's governor recently announced that she would not exercise her authority to remove Mayor Adams from office for now. But she did say she was going to put some strict guardrails in place to sort of monitor any undue influence on the governing of New York City. What do you think about that approach to all of this from a political standpoint and even a legal standpoint, you know, of a governor doing something like that?

So I think it's unfortunate. To be perfectly candid, I do not understand how Mayor Adams can govern. He really is under the threat of criminal prosecution, let alone the odor of mendacity that surrounds the entire affairs to dropping the case.

is one in which it has inspired four deputy mayors to resign. Four deputy mayors have just resigned in the last several days because of this. And I just don't know how the public has trust in him. And, you know, it does not strike me as a coincidence that at the same time this has all happened, in the last few days, Mayor Adams has allowed Mr. Homan's immigration enforcement authorities, immigration federal authorities, to go into Rikers Island. Mm-hmm.

There are many lawyers who think that that is actually illegal. The mayor is violating local law to do that. And that's what we're dealing with. And how can one think that that is a decision purely taken absent this kind of quid pro quo or the arrangement or just even if not an explicit quid pro quo, the fact that the criminal indictment is hanging over his head if he doesn't abide by the very condition they said was the reason we're dropping the case.

I would think that Governor Hochul maybe was waiting for something more significant from Judge Ho's hearing and she didn't get it.

Now, you know, you mentioned Watergate earlier, and we've got just about three minutes left of the show here. So we're going to try to do a really fast history lesson. But a lot of people have compared this to the Nixon administration, right? And the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. It was 1973. Several top Justice Department officials resigned, right, rather than carry out Nixon's order to fire Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox during Watergate. So is this

similar? Is it worse? How would you describe it? It's very similar. I think this may have started on a Thursday afternoon, and some were talking about it as a Thursday afternoon massacre. It's extremely significant. To understand what has happened here with people resigning because they were not willing to carry out this order, I think is more than a canary in the gold mine. I really think we're off the cliff. And

It's just an alarming moment for the country to understand

how this is all taking place, and that there are limitations to what the courts themselves can do to check this kind of abuse. What ramifications were there to the Justice Department in the aftermath of the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973? Why should people feel like it's off the cliff? What should they be looking for?

So I think what Tom had identified earlier in the show is right, that the concern is that we might have a very weaponized Justice Department, that it's not just about cases like this, but it's across the board. And we're already seeing other signs of it. So there are other instances in which the Justice Department has oddly entered in motions to dismiss cases, right?

one by a former Republican member of Congress. And they did that one within nine days of coming into office. I always wondered, like, within nine days, you decided that that was already a case that you wanted to dismiss? And there are other instances. Mr. Bove has written letters that I think on the face of the letter are very deeply concerning. Sanctuary cities, he says, if the

If they don't comply with our requests, then the local officials will be guilty of criminal conduct. That's wrong. That's just wrong as a matter of law. They do not have to abide by requests. And even if the Justice Department tried to command them, there's anti-commandeering constitutional law. So that's one. Other Beauvais letters on the purging of the FBI and DOJ officials just because they touched January 6th cases.

This is already starting to mount, and we are now just in like one month into this administration. So I do think it's very important that people are aware of it. And I do think the other part of it is that

citizens confront their representatives. And we've already seen some of this starting to happen in town hall meetings in which the constituencies need to say to their representatives, why are you not standing up? What are you doing to push back? How could you not have even called for a hearing given what's happened? And you think that pressure from the public would, and we've only got a few seconds here, so just yes or no here really. Do you think that pressure from the public will make

a significant difference because there seems to be disregard for that. I think so because I think there are some vulnerable Republican members

in the Congress. And I think they need to watch out because there's going to be an erosion of public confidence. We already see this with a lot of the polling, that Trump's numbers themselves are dropping. And I think this is a pressure point for them. All right. Brian Goodman, professor of law at New York University, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today. My pleasure. I'm Deborah Becker. This is On Point.

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from Boston University Questrom School of Business. A recent episode offers a primer on executive compensation. Listen on for a preview. Here's BU Questrom professor Charlie Tharp. The whole basis of executive compensation is really the idea of what's called agency theory. Shareholders don't manage the company. They can't observe what executives do every day.

So they rely on a board to use compensation to try to align the interests of CEOs and other managers with the people who own the company, the shareholders. And how do you do that? By making a lot of their pay contingent upon increasing the value of the company stock over time. And for, I would say, the vast majority of companies, they require executives to personally own

a significant stake in the company shares they actually own. For a CEO in a big company, the requirement's usually six times salary. So a CEO would have to hold, while they are CEO, personal ownership of at least $9 million, as an example, in company stock. So you've got incentives aligned with shareholders.

You have skin in the game through ownership by CEOs. And it's all meant so that they're doing things that are in the best interest of shareholders. Again, agency theory. They're the agents of the owners. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.