CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig is excoriating the U.S. Department of Justice, which, under Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, ordered prosecutors last week to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
In a Monday article written for New York magazine’s Intelligencer, Honig said that this has “mushroomed into a full-on existential crisis for the Justice Department,” as Bove’s order prompted several resignations from key federal prosecutors, including one who said it “amounted to a quid pro quo.”
Adams was indicted in September on allegations he accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions, but curried favor with Trump in recent months, particularly by working with him on immigration, leading to speculation that the DOJ order was a reward for Adams’ loyalty.
Bove argued in his directive that the case should be dropped so Adams could continue to help the Trump administration enforce its immigration policy, prompting Honig to condemn everyone involved for both a lack of principles and self-awareness.
He wrote in his article that Bove “told us quite explicitly” that the order was politically motivated and that the resulting public outrage could’ve been avoided had the DOJ decided that the case was “too thin” or had Trump pardoned Adams personally.
Honig then went after Bondi with a series of scathing observations.
“Speaking of: Where the hell is Pam Bondi in all this? (You know: the new attorney general of the United States.),” he wrote. “Apparently she’s been gliding along, blithely half-aware of this case, as if it was some story she had glanced at on the internet.”
Honig noted that when Bondi was asked last week why the case hadn’t been dismissed yet despite seemingly clear instructions for her colleague to ensure as much, she responded simply, “I did not know that it had not been dropped yet” — which the CNN legal analyst pounced on.
“That’s funny because I did, and I’m not the attorney general of the United States,” he wrote. “And in a Fox News appearance, Bondi again deflected, noting defensively that she was in a different time zone. (I’m not sure she fully understands how time zones work. All the same stuff is actually happening, it’s just that the clocks say slightly different things where you are; it’s not like you enter some alternate reality.)”
Honig, who once served as assistant U.S. attorney in the same district where prosecutors have resigned since the Bove order came down, then criticized the precedent Bondi and Bove are setting.
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“Here’s the fundamental problem with what Bove and DOJ leadership have done,” he wrote. “They have enacted and embraced a policy that it’s perfectly valid to base prosecution decisions on the political inclinations of the subject: Mayor Adams can’t remain under indictment because he will help us promote our immigration policy agenda.”
“Imagine where that principle leads,” Honig bleakly added.