CNN legal analyst Elie Honig was left floored by a new memo released by the Trump Department of Justice meant to justify dropping criminal charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Honig’s remarks came during a discussion with CNN’s Kate Bolduan, in which he explained just how unprecedented and “bizarre” it is for such blatant political interference to come straight out of the US Department of Justice.
“This is a bizarre and extraordinary memo,” Honig said. “I’ve really never seen anything like it in all my years of being at the Justice Department. And since then, what the memo says, essentially, this is the bosses at DOJ ordering the Southern District of New York to dismiss their indictment of Eric Adams.”
The legal expert then went on to explain why he found the content of the memo itself to be so incredibly shocking.
“The memo itself said this has nothing to do with the merits of the case, with the quality of the evidence, with anything Eric Adams is alleged to have done,” he said. “Instead, they couch it.”
“First of all, in these sort of broad political terms, they say, well, the prior U.S. attorney had bad motives when he indicted Eric Adams. They argue that it had something to do with trying to influence the election while providing zero support, zero evidence for that.”
“And then the second excuse that DOJ gives is the mayor has to do his job as mayor, he has to focus on his job as mayor, he shouldn’t be sort of sidetracked with such trifling matters as a federal indictment. But by that logic, no public official should ever be indicted for anything because they all have jobs to do, from a member of a city council all the way up to governors and the U.S. Senate. You can make the exact same argument. So this is a flagrantly political move. I think it’s poorly disguised, and I think it’s absolutely out of the ordinary.”
You can watch a clip of the CNN interview here:
Featured image via DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Marianique Santos