Donald Trump on Thursday labeled the Justice Department “dirty players” for accusing Eric Adams of bribery and fraud, as the criminally convicted former president and New York’s embattled mayor suddenly find themselves on similar legal paths.
During a news conference at Trump Tower in New York City, the Republican former president suggested that Adams, a Democrat, would undoubtedly be indicted after criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the migrant wave that has hit the nation’s largest city flooded.
“I saw him talking about a year ago about how the illegal immigrants are hurting our city, and that the federal government should pay us, and we shouldn’t have to take them. And I said, You know what? He will be charged within a year. And I was absolutely right,” Trump said. “Because that’s what we have – we have people using the Justice Department and the FBI at a level that has never been seen before.”
The White House has denied any coordination with the Justice Department on the case. President Joe Biden largely cut ties with Adams nearly two years ago, amid the mayor’s speech about his administration’s response to the influx of migrants.
But Trump, who was convicted in New York earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying corporate records and faces three other criminal investigations, two of them federal, drew parallels between the cases against him and Adams’ criminal charges. And he suggested, without evidence, that the Justice Department again acted in bad faith — even as the indictment of yet another prominent Democrat threatens to weaken the Republican’s argument that his opponents are weaponizing the legal system against him.
‘It struck me that the indictment is very old. It goes back a long time. Well, I had the same thing, they went way before the statute of limitations,” Trump said.
“That’s what they do. These are dirty players. These are bad people. They’re cheating,” Trump continued. “These are bad people, and we need an honest Justice Department, we need an honest FBI, and it needs to come quickly.”
Federal prosecutors have accused Adams of a yearslong conspiracy to receive illegal foreign campaign contributions, wire fraud and bribery, according to a 57-page indictment unsealed Thursday that details lavish trips and other benefits the first-term mayor allegedly received from Turkish officials who were looking for curry influence with the mayor. Adams, the first sitting New York mayor to be indicted, has yet to enter a plea. But he remained defiant and denied any wrongdoing.
Adams was charged on the same day that Trump’s lawyers returned to the New York courtroom to ask an appeals court to issue a civil fraud judgment worth more than $400 million against the former president and his business empire.
The former president said Thursday that while he doesn’t know Adams “well,” the mayor “has been quite generous to me in his statements for some time.”
And as politically diverse but equally bombastic politicians face similar legal entanglements, Trump said, “I wish him the best.”
