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Disturbing DOJ Pressure Over Eric Adams Case Sparks Resignations

3 5
23.04.2025

The corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams may have been dropped and the case dismissed, but the fallout still continues. 

Three federal prosecutors announced their resignations Tuesday, saying that they would quit their jobs rather than admit wrongdoing in continuing to pursue the case against Adams, The New York Times reports. 

In an email, prosecutors Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, and Derek Wikstrom, who all worked on the Adams case, said that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made their admitting to wrongdoing a condition of their reinstatement from administrative leave, after corruption charges against Adams were dropped in February.  

“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” the trio wrote in the email, adding, “Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington.”

Adams spent much of 2024 openly lobbying President Trump to intervene in the federal charges against him for bribery, fraud, and soliciting political donations from Turkish officials in exchange for favors. His efforts paid off two months ago, although comments from Trump’s border czar Tom Homan made it seem like the DOJ was dropping charges in exchange for Adams cracking down on immigrants in New York City. 

Seven prosecutors resigned last month rather than carry out the order from Washington to drop the charges. Now, even though the case was dismissed with prejudice, preventing the Trump administration from using it as leverage over Adams in the future, it appears that the administration tried to get a show of fealty from Manhattan federal prosecutors. While three of them refused, Trump’s DOJ has won the chance to install loyalist attorneys to protect the president and his friends.

A federal judge has ordered that the Trump administration has until 5 p.m. Tuesday to reinstate the legal status of 133 students who had their visas revoked. Many international students have been targeted by the Trump administration for their activism around Israel’s war on Gaza, while others have had their visas revoked over minor incidents.

Judge Victoria Calvert issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the students, who argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “abruptly and unlawfully” terminated their records on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System, making them vulnerable to deportation. The judge’s order of reinstatement applies retroactively to March 21, 2025.

“The Constitution protects everyone on American soil, so the Trump administration cannot ignore due process to unjustifiably threaten students with the loss of immigration status, and arrest and deportation,” said ACLU senior staff attorney Avika Friedlin. “We believe this ruling shows the students are likely to prevail on their claims, and we are pleased the court ordered the government to halt its unlawful actions while the lawsuit continues.”

The Trump administration has already terminated the visas of more than 1,550 international students, putting them at heightened risk of deportation. The Georgia case will be heard for a preliminary injunction on Thursday.

Donald Trump has taken his tirade against immigrants with tattoos to new heights, baselessly claiming that Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s knuckle tattoos clearly associate him with MS-13.

“This is the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, that the Courts are trying to save from being deported?” the president wrote on Truth Social Monday night. “He was supposed to be, according to the Judge and the Democrats, a wonderful father from Maryland, but then they noticed he had ‘MS-13’ tattooed onto his knuckles (and lots of really bad stories about his past!).”

The post includes a photo of Trump holding up a photo of a hand, supposedly Abrego Garcia’s, with a marijuana leaf, smiley face, cross, and skull tattooed across the knuckles. On top of each individual tattoo is written M-S-1-3, the president’s way of explaining each tattoo clearly translates to an individual letter or number, which all together spell … MS-13?

“This is the gang that is, perhaps, the worst of them all. What is wrong with our Country?” Trump’s post concluded, leaving out any explanation for how he broke the tattoo code.

Abrego Garcia was unlawfully deported to El Salvador last month due to an admitted “administrative error” by the Trump administration, though officials have since doubled down on unfounded claims that Abrego Garcia is part of MS-13. Now the president is resorting to one of his favorite, but most outrageous, justifications for deporting Latino men without due process: They have tattoos.

After he ignored court orders and deported 200 Venezuelan immigrants to a megaprison in El Salvador, Trump cited photos of their tattoos as proof that they were part of Tren de Aragua. One man had a tattoo of a rose and a skull; another........

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