Eric Adams hopes Supreme Court’s curbing of corruption prosecutions helps gut his own

When the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the use of federal bribery law against state and local officials this past term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent called the “absurd and atextual reading of the statute” one that “only today’s Court could love.”

Eric Adams might love it, too.

On Monday, New York City’s first indicted sitting mayor moved to dismiss the federal bribery charge against him, citing that recent Supreme Court precedent, called Snyder v. United States.

“Just three months ago, the Supreme Court rebuked the Justice Department for adopting an ‘unfathomable’ interpretation of the federal-program bribery statute,” the Democratic mayor’s lawyers wrote in their trial court motion, citing the Snyder case.

“Yet here goes the Department again,” they argued, surmising that:

Arguing that “the government’s makeover doesn’t work,” Adams’ lawyers wrote:

They concluded the 25-page filing by writing:

Now, this is the type of argument that the Supreme Court has embraced in recent years — not just in the Snyder case but also in a string of appeals dating back at least to the 2016 ruling in favor of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell that narrowed corruption-related prosecutions.

It’s too early to know whether Adams, who has pleaded not guilty, will be able to successfully harness that judicial skepticism to get out of his indictment, which we’re all still digesting. But however heavy-handed the defense argument sounds, it’s the sort of claim that Adams’ lawyers would be foolish not to make, given the state of the law and the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department will get to respond to Adams’ motion, and federal prosecutors will likely disagree with both the defendant’s understanding of the law and how it applies to the facts of his case. (Adams’ motion only concerns the bribery allegation, and we should expect him to separately challenge the other charges in the indictment, including those related to allegedly illegal campaign contribution dealings.)

Indeed, prosecutors probably aren’t too surprised at Adams’ argument. At least they shouldn’t be. In strategizing the case, they likely will have considered the charges against the backdrop of how they would fare on an inevitable appeal if there’s a conviction. But however damning the allegations against the mayor may seem, the justices apparently stand ready to save white-collar defendants from charges that could possibly be seen as criminalizing politics, however shady that politics is.

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This article was originally published on MSNBC.com