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Unknown A
Well, this is a follow up to a story that we've been repeatedly discussing throughout the past week, which is the corrupt quid pro quo between the Trump administration and disgraced Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Here is a plot twist as the federal government desperately moves to drop the case against Adams in order, in my opinion, to extort him for political reasons. The presiding judge in the case has thrown a curveball, saying that actually he's not going to accept it unless there is a hearing in which the federal government explains its actions. And to discuss this, to unpack it, I brought in, bringing in a lawyer friend of the show, Pisco, of Pisco's Hour, to unpack all this. Pisco, what the hell is going on, man?
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Unknown B
Yeah, so as we saw last week, there was a great deal of consternation within the Justice Department, the government, and frankly, from observers regarding what was going to be done with this criminal case that had been opened against Mayor Eric Adams, who had been charged initially for bribery and things related to corruption and deleting evidence. And one of the big points of contention was wondering out loud who was going to file a motion to dismiss the case. From the prosecutor's perspective, there was an unwillingness from a lot of different actors to file this paperwork, essentially to initiate the process of removing this federal charge from the docket. Of course, temporarily, not with prejudice, but without prejudice.
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Unknown A
Right, because they wanted to dangle it over his head, you know, to enforce his compliance. And that led, I think, to seven, at least seven resignations. And then the Emile Beauvais, who seems to be like the primary villain in this particular story, herding all of the prosecutors in this Public Integrity section into a room and saying, one, one of you is going to file the. Or sign put that. You put your signature on the paperwork to drop these charges or you're all fired.
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Unknown B
That's 100% correct. And ultimately, they did find someone, I believe, from the Integrity Unit to file this motion. And as was kind of anticipated from the former acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who initiated this in the first place, Danielle Sassoon, there was going to be an opportunity for the court to weigh in, potentially the criminal rules of the rules of Criminal Procedure, if you can show them that, Josiah, now provide that not always when a prosecution moves to dismiss a case, will they decide, Will the court grant leave? So you can see Rule 48A, and if you read it out loud, it says the government may, with leave of a court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant's consent. And so that is showing you that in at least some cases, and there's some question about how far this power to deny the executive right to enforce the law is within the judicial department.
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Unknown B
But there seems to be a contemplated role for the courts to have in terms of whether or not a government is allowed to dismiss a case.
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Unknown A
Yes. So let's talk about this for a minute. So, you know, this is. Do you think the DOJ expected that this would be the case, that Judge Ho would avail himself of his right to demand a hearing to discuss the dismissal, or did they expect kind of the judge to just like wipe his hands and be done with it?
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Unknown B
Yeah, I think that they absolutely did expect that this could be a possibility. One of the reasons is because they were warned by the Acting U.S. attorney, the former Acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. And it was sort of well understood that the kind of explosive quid pro quo, in my opinion, would be something that would face judicial scrutiny. And that's why they've been kind of tightening their language a little bit. Publicly you can see some of their surrogates, like Tom Homan, like Donald Trump even come out and say, there was no quid pro quo. I had no interference. And so both the warning explicitly from the acting U.S. attorney and then kind of the change in how they're dealing with the language surrounding what actually occurred with the dismissal or the purported dismissal or the attempted dismissal of this case kind of indicated to me that they were expecting this could face some scrutiny.
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Unknown A
So let's talk about this. As the New York Times reports, the judge in a two page order offered no hint about his position and made it clear that under a federal rule, the executive branch was, quote, the first and presumptively the best judge of whether to drop prosecution. And I'll just say as, as a political guy with a political science degree, but not a lawyer, that seems to be like a separation of powers things idea that, you know, again, we don't live under judicial supremacy and the executive, it's pretty wide discretion about when, where and how they enforce the law. So it seems to be a gesture, like, listen, see up to the executive to bring prosecutions. And in 99 cases out of 100, judges just need to screw off. And if a, if an executive decides to withdraw prosecution. But there seems to be like this 1 in 100 case where the judge can be like, wait a minute, we, I have some more questions.
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Unknown A
Is that, is that a fair way to interpret it? In a layman's interpretation, yeah, I think.
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Unknown B
That that's more or less correct. It's raising a bunch of concerns with the separation of powers. One of the main drivers for the. This rule in the first place is to protect defendants from. From a government that's just like being bad faith about bringing and then refusing to get rid of cases and kind of bringing it back, Bringing it back, bringing it back. And so that was kind of maybe the main intention of case that was anticipated, but obviously it's a big deal and potentially disquieting that the independent judiciary. Right. Could be in charge of what, appointing a special prosecutor to execute the laws? I don't right now have a public position on whether or not that's correct, but that's certainly what at least one amicus wants them to do. They want the court to appoint a special prosecutor using its own jurisdiction and initiative.
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Unknown B
And my guess is that's going to face a ton of scrutiny and that this Supreme Court probably won't let it happen. But you should keep that in mind. That purpose that is always omnipresent in what the Trump administration is doing is to test the limits of both the judicial oversight over its actions and Congresses. Because if Congress established the procedures and rules by which the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure are even implemented, and so this implicates both Congress's fundamental ability to put a check on executive prerogatives, but also the courts in terms of to what extent they're allowed to withhold their leave.
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Unknown A
Well, let me ask you, like, I guess, just getting down to brass tacks, is it possible for Judge Ho, in any timeline in the multiverse, to refuse the executive branch's attempts to withdraw the case? And what could he then do? You mentioned a special prosecutor. Would that have to be how it goes? If, if the judge kind of breaks glass in case of emergency, he then signs the case, he takes the case away from the federal government and puts it in the hands of somebody else to prosecute?
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Unknown B
Yeah, it's a great question and one that I believe is a little bit unknown at this point. There was, I don't know if you recall the Flynn prosecution under the first.
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Unknown A
Trump administration, General Michael Flynn.
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Unknown B
Yes, yes. Do you recall that in the prosecution?
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Unknown A
Barely. Barely. It was. It was such a blur then. Yeah, yeah.
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Unknown B
And there was a little bit of hubaloo and Bill Barr kind of reassessed. This is prior to him being pardoned. Remember, Michael Flynn was pardoned. All of Trump's cronies and sycophants were eventually pardoned. But this was before when there was this pretense that there was a rule of law under Trump administration, but Bill Barr had dismissed or had ordered the charges against Michael Flynn to be dismissed. And the question was, is the court bound by that? And in that specific instance, ultimately the court acquiesced. Here you have an even thinner rationale as opposed to what occurred in the Flynn case. In the Flynn case, at least, you had Bill Barr coming out and saying, hey, we think the evidence is weak. We've reassessed the evidence. We think that this is a bad case because we don't believe in it.
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Unknown A
But to your point, Emil Bove, I mean, he gave the game away in his back and forth with former prosecutor Sassoon by saying, actually, we haven't evaluated the strength of your case. This, he made it very clear. And also, you shared, you know, there's abundant evidence to this, but you shared an additional piece of evidence actually from, from Adams own attorneys about the possible quid pro quo with this footnote here from Adams attorney saying if Mayor Adams is removed from office, he would be replaced, at least temporarily, by Public Advocate Jumon Williams, a frequent outspoken critic of Mayor Adams desire to protect New Yorkers by combating the migrant crisis. Clear signal to the Trump administration, like, hey, it's in your best political interest, wink, wink, that Mayor Adams not be replaced by somebody who would be a vociferous critic of your policy. So it, it really does seem like a pretty textbook example of a quid pro quo.
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Unknown A
So ho could refuse the executive branch's attempts to withdraw the case? He would assign it to a special prosecutor. What sort of powers would that prosecutor have?
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Unknown B
Yeah, unknown. How is this a fourth branch of government? Is this a quasi judicial role? Does the prosecutor have the authorities of individuals in the Department of Justice, especially when we're talking about a high profile political case? To me, the outer bounds of what the court could do in this instance is not completely well defined, and it's one that we should be wary of. Like you mentioned before, we are highly critical of the centralization, authorities of, or designs of the Trump administration. But that doesn't mean that we want to empower every court in the country potentially. Now, this is not happening all over the country. I think that it makes sense for the court to consider it, and maybe they consider things they haven't thought about. But it would be a profound thing to allow for a court to just appoint a prosecutor whenever they disagree with.
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Unknown A
You know, getting rid of it seems to be on some level a usurpation of executive prerogatives. I mean, I'll say this, and again, you and I are friends. We are frequent collaborators. You know how I feel about the judiciary. I feel that we live under a system of de facto judicial supremacy. And even though I am very grateful that courts are attempting in good faith to impede Donald Trump's lawlessness, they are trying to check him in good faith. I'm also, and I've said this in all my content on it, I am uncomfortable about a judiciary where judges are at the federal level, appointed for life or until resignation with very little by way of accountability, particularly with the Supreme Court. I don't like that idea of giving them unfettered power. I think that the courts need to be brought to heel in some respects, certainly with respect to ethics and accountability, then I would probably be more comfortable with something like this.
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Unknown A
If I knew that it would be relatively easy to impeach and remove Judge Ho or any federal judge, then I would probably be more comfortable with Judge Ho stepping in in the situation. But you also have a blatant act of corruption. And if Judge Ho doesn't stop, seems like Eric Adams could just get away with this. And even worse, cuz he's not the only corrupt party here. Pisco, as you know, the Trump administration is being blatantly corrupt. And what's funny is so much right wing commentary on this. You know, you recently had a debate with actual justice warrior Sean at debatecon and I don't want to litigate this too much because I don't want to go over our time. But you know, he was willing to see, oh, I think Mayor Adams is corrupt. Yeah, no shit. That's not contested. The question is, do you recognize the corruption of the other party involved, which is the Trump administration.
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Unknown A
All these right wing commentators are really quick because Adams is a Democrat. Oh yeah, Adams is corrupt. But this quid pro quo also imputes the Trump administration as well. They are also engaging in corruption. So it seems like we are in a truly a dire situation where we are putting a lot of hopes on this hearing and a federal judge taking unprecedented steps or near unprecedented steps and maybe usurping executive prerogatives to try to check this corruption. It's almost like we're in a Godzilla movie between two Kaiju, you know.
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Unknown B
Totally agree. I like the analogy there. The last thing I'll say is the following. I have not determined my position whether or not it would be appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor in this case. I would be interested to hear what the Judge has to say, and maybe I'll be convinced and maybe I won't be, but we'll see when the time comes. If there is ever been a case of bad faith actions by the executive branch where there's plenty. You pointed to that footnote. There's plenty of evidence that what's going on here is a political and corrupt quid pro quo. If there was ever a case in which it would be appropriate for the the court to step in and to appoint a special prosecutor, it would be a case like this. And so whatever you want to say about the inherent authorities of the court to do something like this, and again, I'll be looking now to see what the opinion says.
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Unknown B
If there was a case in which it would be appropriate, it would be this case. We've never seen anything quite like this in our country's history. It's worse than anything Nixon has ever done. It is absolutely one of the most corrupt and despicable acts in the history of the Republican. And yeah, thank you for giving me opportunity to chat.
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Unknown A
No, well, listen, I'm just going to close with this. Two questions for you. It is worse than Watergate. It seems like a Tuesday for Trump. That's how corrupt this administration is. Two questions. Do you support at least the hearing? You think Judge Ho is right to have the hearing. So not you're not necessarily ready to commit to him appointing a special prosecutor, but at least the hearing demanding more explanation. You do support that?
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Unknown B
Yeah, that seems to be pursuant to Rule 48. And there's does appear to be an expectation that there's a role for the court. And so I'm totally fine with that.
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Unknown A
Last question then. We're getting updates on Governor Kathy Hochul of New York indicating that she is seriously contemplating removing Mayor Adams, which New York, the New York Constitution and the New York City Charger permit her to do. Do you still support the removal of Eric Adams by Governor Hochul?
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Unknown B
100 trillion percent I support that and I'm glad and hopeful that the governor will continue to see that that's the correct course of action.
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Unknown A
Would you oppose her reelection if she chose not to in a primary?
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Unknown B
Absolutely. Yes, I would. I think it's vital for the interests of the city that I live in that Mayor Adams no longer be at the head of it.
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Unknown A
Perfect. Well, Pisco, I appreciate it. Where can people find you?
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Unknown B
Pisco's Hour on YouTube. Pisco Liddy on Twitter.
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Unknown A
All right, perfect man. Thank you. And I'll see you, I guess, on Wednesday.
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Unknown B
Thank you, man.