A federal judge on Friday delayed a ruling on the Justice Department’s request to drop the corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, instead appointing an outside lawyer to present independent arguments on the motion, which was otherwise unopposed.
The lawyer the judge appointed, Paul D. Clement, is a political conservative who was the U.S. solicitor general during President George W. Bush’s administration.
The judge, Dale E. Ho of Federal District Court in Manhattan, also called for additional briefs from the parties and said he would hold an oral argument on March 14 if he felt it was necessary.
Judge Ho’s decision, explained in a five-page ruling, will prolong a tumultuous episode that has led to political and legal upheaval, with federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigning and several of Mr. Adams’s campaign opponents calling for him to step down.
The events have increased pressure on Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, who said on Thursday that she would seek to impose strict new guardrails on the mayor’s administration rather than try to force him out of office.
Judge Ho noted in his order on Friday that, with a top Justice Department official and the mayor’s lawyers agreeing the case should end, he needed to hear other arguments.
“Normally, courts are aided in their decision-making through our system of adversarial testing,” Judge Ho wrote, “which can be particularly helpful in cases presenting unusual fact patterns or in case of great public importance.”
He said that because the Justice Department and Mr. Adams both wanted the charges dropped, “there has been no adversarial testing of the government’s position.”
The government’s request for the Adams case to be dropped was signed by the Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, after the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, refused to obey the order and resigned.
Ms. Sassoon, in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, sharply criticized what she said was a quid pro quo, in which the government had agreed to end the case against the mayor in exchange for his help with President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Ms. Sassoon, in her letter, said that such an arrangement with Mr. Adams would set “a breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”
Mr. Bove, in ordering Ms. Sassoon to seek the dismissal of the charges, said explicitly that the directive was not related to the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case was based. Instead, he said, the pending prosecution was hindering the mayor’s cooperation with the administration’s immigration plans.
Both Mr. Bove and Mr. Adams’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, have vigorously denied that any deal preceded the government’s motion to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams, a Democrat. The mayor was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He has pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Spiro did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday, nor did a Justice Department spokesman.
Mr. Adams was scheduled to go on trial in April, but Judge Ho, in his ruling, ordered the trial adjourned without setting a new date.
Mr. Clement is an appellate lawyer at the firm Clement & Murphy in Washington and a distinguished lecturer in law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court.
“This is such a savvy move by Judge Ho,” Stephen Vladeck, a Georgetown law professor, said in a post on Bluesky, the social media platform.
Mr. Clement not only has “impeccable (conservative) credentials,” Professor Vladeck wrote, but his years as solicitor general and even the 24 hours he once spent as acting attorney general mean that “he can participate with quite a bit of perspective as to the proper role of the Department of Justice.”
Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor, said Judge Ho’s order did not say whether Mr. Clement was being asked to argue against dismissal of the Adams case, or simply to offer his best interpretation of what the law requires.
”It seems as if the judge wants an opposing view,” Professor Roiphe said, “but he isn’t clear about how Clement is supposed to approach his role.”
In what may be a call for an opposing view, Judge Ho wrote that the legal system “assumes adversarial testing will ultimately advance the public interest in truth and fairness.”
He listed a half-dozen questions he wanted Mr. Clement and the parties to address, including whether, as the government wants, the charges should be dropped “without prejudice,” meaning they could be reinstated.
The department’s motion seeking the ability to reinstate the charges has led some critics to argue that Mr. Adams would be more beholden to Mr. Trump’s agenda than to his constituents.
William K. Rashbaum and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
