Watchdog group head asks Manhattan DA to prosecute Eric Adams on dismissed federal corruption charges

The head of a government watchdog group on Wednesday called on the Manhattan District Attorney's Office to open an investigation into alleged corruption during New York City Mayor Eric Adams administration, asking him to pick up where the U.S. Justice Department left off.

Adams, a one-term mayor who was voted out of office last year, was indicted in September 2024 on charges he solicited more than $100,000 in donations from Turkish nationals in exchange for municipal favors and defrauded the state matching campaign funds system by using straw donors.

The former mayor pleaded not guilty and the case appeared to be headed to trial when Todd Blanche, once President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer who is now the acting U.S. attorney general, intervened in February 2025 and asked to have the case dropped.

The top Justice Department official said that the case hindered Adams’ ability to carry out the president’s hardline deportation policy and interfered with the election, which was months away at the time.

District Court Judge Dale Ho, who presided over the case, suggested that a backroom deal had been struck between Gracie Mansion and the White House and he resisted dropping the case. “Everything here smacks of a bargain,” he wrote in his decision. He added that it was “disturbing” that “public officials may receive special dispensation if they are compliant with the incumbent administration’s policy priorities.”

Ultimately, the judge determined that he had no authority to oppose the Justice Department decision to end the case.

On Wednesday, Grace Rauh, executive director of Citizens Union, wrote an open letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, pointing out that many of the federal crimes the former mayor was indicted for also violate New York statutes and urged the office to pick up the case.

“That evidence should not lie dormant,” she said in her letter, encouraging the state prosecutor to proceed even without the cooperation of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton.

“These alleged offenses are not merely federal in character,” Rauh wrote in her letter to Bragg. “Your office is, of course, bound by no obligation to defer to the political calculus of the current federal administration, and the laws of the State of New York provide you with ample authority to pursue this matter on independent grounds.”

Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for Clayton, declined to comment.

Bragg, through a spokeswoman, would not commit to taking up the case on Wednesday, but left open the possibility that his office would.

“The office considered all available and feasible avenues suggested in this letter at the time of the federal dismissal,” spokeswoman Danielle Filson said in a statement.

 The office has brought corruption charges against other former members of the Adams administration.

One-time Department of Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich was charged in 2023 with taking more than $150,000 in bribes to clear city health department violations, building infractions and towing company summonses for favored companies.

Manhattan prosecutors secured an indictment against Adams’ former chief of staff, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, last August for taking more than $75,000 to steer lucrative city contracts to a local business. The case is pending.

Federal authorities have opened an investigation into two former NYPD commissioners who served under Adams, but no charges have been brought to date.

Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for Adams, said in a statement: "The mayor has been clear from the beginning that the allegations brought against him were without merit, which is exactly why the case was dismissed and why New Yorkers have watched him continue doing the work of serving the city without distraction.

"Attempts to revive a dismissed federal matter through political pressure campaigns do nothing to help working New Yorkers, reduce crime, build housing, or move the city forward," the statement said.