By Jake Offenhartz, Jennifer Peltz and Anthony Izaguirre, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) – New York governess Kathy Hochul held a series of meetings on Tuesday with the main political leaders when she plans to withdraw mayor Eric Adams from her office, an unprecedented stage that reflects the troubles croissants inside the town hall.
The Governor’s scheduled sit -downds – with a cohort of influential black leaders and other senior civil servants – come when Adams, a democrat, faces his case of corruption so that he can better help the repression of the Immigration by President Donald Trump.
Hochul, also a democrat, has the power to withdraw Adams from office. But she hesitated to do so, arguing that such a decision would be undemocratic, while pushing the city in an unusual legal process.
But her political calculation seemed to change Monday evening after four of the main deputies of Adams announced their resignation, who, according to her, “raises serious questions on the long -term future of this administration of the mayor”.
Two people familiar with the governor’s calendar, but who were not allowed to publicly disclose the details of the meetings, said that Hochul should speak on Tuesday with the American representative Hakeem Jeffries, the New York Controller Brad Lander, the president From the municipal council Adrienne Adams, the Reverend Al Sharpton and the American representative Gregory Mings on the future of Adams.
After his meeting, Sharpton said that the governor had told him that she “would see what the judge decides tomorrow and would continue to deliberate with other leaders”. He did not explicitly say if he had exhorted the mayor to start the referral process, but he said that he had supported Hochul’s decision to wait for the hearing of the court on Wednesday.
The controller and the chairman of the Council are members of the so-called “Inability Committee”, an organization of five people authorized by the charters of the city to withdraw a mayor who is deemed unfit to serve.
Lander, who also presents himself to the Democratic primary, said that he would summon the panel if the mayor does not describe an emergency plan to direct the city by the end of the week. Hochul also spoke by telephone with another member of the Committee, the president of the Queens district, Donovan Richards, according to the two sources.
Adams did not approach the growing calls to move at an independent press conference on a police officer who was shot down on Tuesday morning. Leaving the hospital, he offered a laconic response to journalists who asked why he had not asked questions for weeks: “Because you all have liars”.
The mayor faces a political crisis
The town hall of Adams has turned into a political crisis in the most populous city in the country.
The Winds of Scandal began to blow in November 2023, when the phones of the mayor of the first mandate were seized as part of a federal investigation into his collection of campaign funds in 2021. It denied any reprehensible act.
During the year that followed, several key aid and allies in its administration were examined and some resigned. Then Adams himself was charged with corruption and other accusations, accused of having favored for the Turkish government after obtaining illegal campaign donations and trips abroad.
He pleaded not guilty and said he was politically targeted for criticizing President Joe Biden’s immigration policies. Adams, a centrist democrat, began to get closer to the president of the time, Donald Trump, while the Republican arose last year to recover the White House.
After Trump won, Adams’ openings intensified – and Trump began to publicly float the possibility of forgiveness for the mayor, suggesting that Adams had been “treated quite unfair”. Adams flew to Florida to meet Trump before taking office, and the mayor abandoned a planned observation of Martin Luther King in New York after obtaining a last minute invitation to the inauguration of Trump. Meanwhile, Adams reported the opening to the softening of city policies which limit cooperation with the federal immigration authorities.
Adams insisted that he was looking for the interests of the city, not his, to cultivate a relationship with the president.
But the argument was tested when Trump’s Ministry of Justice ordered prosecutors this month to abandon the accusations against Adams, at least for the moment. The acting deputy prosecutor general Emil Bove said that the case had “the unduly restricted capacity of the mayor Adams to devote total attention and resources” to illegal immigration and violent crimes. Both are Trump priorities.
The order stimulated an extraordinary confrontation between the Bove named Trump and several career prosecutors and supervisors of public corruption affairs, who resigned rather than realizing what they considered as a politically based on accusations. In the end, two lawyers from the Ministry of Higher Justice filed the documents required to ask a judge to end the case on Friday. A hearing was set at Wednesday.
In the meantime, a wider storm has started to swirl on the assertion of a prosecutor now form that Adams lawyers have offered his cooperation on immigration policy in exchange for rejecting the case. Adams lawyers have denied any quid-quo offer, while saying that they told prosecutors when asked, that the case had the efforts to apply the mayor’s immigration .
A choir of Democrats from New York has now called Adams to leave or be ousted, saying that it had sold the city to save itself.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
