Judge onAdams Case Gets Thousand of Letters Insisting He Keeps Charges AND>> Plane Crash

Judge Dale E. Ho must decide whether to let the Justice Department go quietly or ask it to explain itself.Credit...Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters

 

By Benjamin Weiser

 The New York Times

Judge Dale E. Ho, who on Wednesday will hold a hearing in the foundering corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, is facing a storm of demands that he look deeply into the federal government’s reasons for seeking to drop the prosecution.

On Monday night, three former U.S. attorneys from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut filed a brief asking the judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the Adams case was in the public interest or merely a pretext for securing the mayor’s cooperation with the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies.

Earlier in the day, Common Cause, the good-government advocacy group, asked the judge to deny the Justice Department’s motion, which it called part of a “corrupt quid pro quo bargain.” The organization asked the judge to consider appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the case.

And the New York City Bar Association, with more than 20,000 lawyers as members, said in a statement that the order by a top Justice Department official, Emil Bove III, “cuts to the heart of the rule of law” and asked for a “searching inquiry” into the facts.  

On Tuesday morning, Judge Ho set a hearing for 2 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the reasons for the government’s motion and the procedure for resolving it.

The legal and political crisis encompasses both the Justice Department and New York’s City Hall, calling into question Mr. Adams’s future as well as the independence and probity of federal prosecutions.

Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. He pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April. But last week, Mr. Bove caused a cascade of resignations as prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington refused to comply with his order, including Danielle R. Sassoon, who stepped down as the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan. On Friday, Mr. Bove himself signed a formal request that Judge Ho will now consider.

The law gives judges scant ability to refuse a prosecutor’s request to drop criminal charges. But Mr. Adams’s case may be an exception.

In their brief, the former U.S. attorneys listed more than a dozen questions they said needed to be answered before Judge Ho could decide whether to approve the department’s request to dismiss the case “without prejudice.” With that outcome, the Trump administration could reinstate the charges. 

“What is at stake here is far more than an internal prosecutorial dispute about an individual case,” the former U.S. attorneys wrote. “The public furor that has arisen during the past week raises concerns about respect for the rule of law and the division of power between the executive and judicial branches of government in our nation.”

The former top prosecutors who filed the brief were John S. Martin Jr., who served in the Southern District of New York; Robert J. Cleary, who served in New Jersey; and Deirdre M. Daly, who served in Connecticut.

The filing was made by lawyers with the pro bono firm Free and Fair Litigation Group; they asked Judge Ho to accept the submission as a “friend of the court” brief. In it, they argue in support of his authority to conduct a factual inquiry into the Justice Department’s actions.

One of the lawyers who filed the brief, Mark Pomerantz, a former chief of the Southern District’s criminal division, said the brief was unusual in arguing that the judge should deny the government’s dismissal request because the parties in the case — the Justice Department and Mr. Adams — were in agreement that the prosecution should end.

“We would like to represent a point of view that none of the parties have an interest in presenting to the court,” Mr. Pomerantz said. 

Nick Akerman, the lawyer for Common Cause, also asked that his organization be heard as a friend of the court, noting that because the government had agreed with Mr. Adams to dismiss the indictment, no one was representing the public before the judge.

He asked that Judge Ho consider the appointment of an independent prosecutor, as State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat who is running for mayor, did last week. It is a remedy that is unusual but plausible, said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics expert at New York University School of Law.

Professor Gillers said that if Judge Ho ordered the government to proceed with the case and it refused, the judge might then explore the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor.

“He’d be vindicating the interest of the grand jury and the court itself in not letting the case die,” Professor Gillers said.

The New York City Bar Association’s statement said that Mr. Bove’s request, which would allow the Trump administration to reinstate the charges against Mr. Adams, was “expressly political.” 

“The policy choices of the government of New York City cannot be dependent on or appear to be dependent on the decision of the Justice Department to prosecute or withhold prosecution of corruption charges against the mayor,” the statement said.

Ms. Sassoon, the former interim U.S. attorney, characterized Mr. Bove’s order to seek an end to the prosecution as a quid pro quo — a dropping of charges in exchange for the mayor’s support in President Trump’s political goal of mass deportations.

“I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations,” Ms. Sassoon wrote in a letter to the U.S. attorney general, Pam Bondi.

Ms. Sassoon said in the letter that prosecutors had been prepared to bring an additional charge that would accuse the mayor of destroying evidence and instructing others to do the same.

A lawyer for Mr. Adams, Alex Spiro, called that a false claim. He said that if prosecutors had proof that the mayor had destroyed evidence, “they would have brought those charges — as they continually threatened to do.” 

Ms. Sassoon resigned rather than obey, and at least six other prosecutors in New York and Washington did the same.

Mr. Bove, whose order specified that his decision to dismiss the case had nothing to do with its legal strengths, finally signed the motion himself, along with two other Washington prosecutors, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette T. Bacon.

Late Monday night, Justice Connection, an organization that supports Justice Department employees facing “unprecedented attacks on their employment, their integrity, their well-being and their safety,” made public an open letter praising prosecutors in New York and Washington who resigned or whose jobs were threatened.

It was signed by more than 850 former federal prosecutors and was addressed to their counterparts still in the department. Among the signers was Jack Smith, the special counsel who carried out two federal criminal investigations of Mr. Trump.

“You have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction,” the Justice Connection’s letter said, adding that current prosecutors would face more challenges ahead.

”Generations of former federal prosecutors are watching with pride and admiration and stand ready to support you in this honorable pursuit,” the letter said.

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Plane Crash Toronto

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By Yan ZhuangVjosa IsaiNeil Vigdor and Ian Austen

Vjosa Isai reported from Toronto.

Feb. 18, 2025

Updated 9:31 a.m. ET

Delta Flight 4819’s landing seemed routine — until it wasn’t.

For the 80 people on board, the world lurched immediately after the wheels hit the ground at Toronto Pearson International Airport on Monday afternoon. The plane sparked and burst into flames as it skidded along the runway, then it rolled onto its back, its right wing shearing off.

In the blink of an eye, passengers found themselves hanging upside down, still strapped into their seats as jet fuel began running down the windows, said Pete Carlson, one of those on the flight.

“The absolute initial feeling is just, ‘Need to get out of this,’” Mr. Carlson told CBC, the Canadian national broadcaster.

But after a horrific string of fatal aviation accidents over the past two months, this crash proved different. Flight attendants and passengers were able to help each other out of the emergency exits and onto the snow. At least 18 people were injured, including one adult and one child in critical but non-life threatening condition, but everyone was expected to survive. By late Monday, some of the injured passengers had been released from the hospital, Delta said.

A video circulating on social media on Tuesday and verified by The New York Times showed the moment of the jet’s crash landing. The video, taken from a nearby runway, shows the aircraft landing hard on a snow-covered runway and then flipping over on its right side amid black clouds of smoke. The Times has so far been unable to reach the person who took the video.

The jet, a Bombardier CRJ900 operated by a Delta subsidiary, Endeavor Air, was landing at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time after a seemingly normal flight along the busy route between Minneapolis and Toronto.

“The second that the wheels hit the ground, then everything happened,” said Pete Koukov, a professional skier from Colorado, in an interview on Monday night. “The next thing I know, we’re sideways.”

 

Final approach

The jet attempted to land amid strong winds and drifting snow

Wind gusts reached about 40 miles

per hour when the plane landed

Last recorded

location

Where the plane came to rest with its belly up

650 feet

North

Sources: Aerial image by Airbus via Google Earth; liveact.net; Flight data by Flightradar24By Pablo Robles

The plane skidded on its right side, said Mr. Koukov, who was sitting at a window seat on the other side of the plane. He saw sparks and flames as the plane hit the ground.

When the plane came to a stop belly-up, he unbuckled and lowered himself down to the ceiling of the aircraft, which was now its floor, Mr. Koukov said. “People were panicking.”

A video taken by Mr. Koukov shows a flight attendant helping passengers climb out of the plane, urging them to hurry and to leave their belongings behind.

Other videos from the scene showed flames and black smoke billowing from the plane as firefighters hosed it down. Photos taken after the crash showed most of the right wing of the jet shorn off, and the left wing damaged with the left landing gear still attached to the plane.

In the aftermath of the crash, an air traffic controller told a medical helicopter pilot who offered to help: “There are people outside walking around the aircraft there.”

“Yeah, we’ve got it. The aircraft is upside down and burning,” the helicopter pilot responded, according to LiveATC audio.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will lead the investigation into the crash, officials have said, and the National Transportation Safety Board has said it was leading a team of American investigators to assist the Canadian authorities.

The crash is likely to create aviation chaos for days to come. Toronto Pearson, Canada’s largest and busiest airport, was already juggling a slew of delays and cancellations caused by a series of winter storms. Although its operations resumed on Monday afternoon, two of its five runways remain closed.

On Tuesday morning most flights arriving at the airport were delayed or canceled and most departures were expected to be delayed, some by up to 10 hours, into the afternoon.

Few details have been released about the crash so far. At two short news conferences, Canadian officials gave brief statements but would not take questions.

 

But the government’s weather service said that gusts of up to 38 miles an hour were coming from the west as it was landing. There was also drifting snow in the Toronto area, which was struck by two snowstorms in the past few days.

The jet’s pilots had told passengers during the flight that there were windy conditions, said Mr. Carlson, the paramedic who was on the flight. But he and others were still unprepared for the jolt when it came. “It was cement and metal,” he said.

Mr. Carlson, who had a scrape visible on his head, said he saw a woman who had ended up under a seat and a mother and a boy who were sitting on the ceiling of the aircraft. He had no idea what state any of them were in, he said. “My fatherly instinct and background as a paramedic kind of kicked in,” he said, making him focus on ensuring that they all got off the plane.

Even in those panicky moments, there was a palpable camaraderie as they escaped the plane, he said. “Everyone on that plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another,” he said. “That was powerful.”

Jet fuel was running down the airplane’s windows, Mr. Carlson said. And after leaving the plane, he and others tried to move as far from it as possible once he noticed that a wing was missing and heard sounds of an explosion.

“I didn’t care how cold it was,” he said. “I didn’t care how far I had to walk, how long I had to stand. All of us wanted to just be out of the aircraft.”