It took 51 years for the Justice Department to build its tradition of political independence. It took President Donald Trump and his allies roughly three weeks to demolish it. Through a series of orders, memos, and actions since Inauguration Day, the second Trump administration has successfully demolished the post-Watergate norm that federal prosecutors should operate according to the law and without regard for partisan demands by the White House.

Nothing symbolized Trump’s victory over those norms like the department’s decision to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Federal prosecutors had charged Adams with a variety of corruption-related charges last year for his interactions with the Turkish government. After Trump’s victory in November, the embattled mayor traveled to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to the president-elect, for purposes that were transparently—hilariously—obvious.

Mission accomplished: On Tuesday, the government dropped the case against Adams. Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, ordered the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan to dismiss the charges without prejudice, meaning they could theoretically be refiled in the future. His memo instructed prosecutors that there was to be “no further targeting of Mayor Adams or any additional investigative steps” before the department conducts a deeper review after this year’s mayoral election.

Bove made clear that the department had “reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which this case is based.” Instead, it argued that dismissal was necessary on policy grounds. “The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration,” Bove wrote.

If this sounds suspiciously like a corrupt quid pro quo, then Bove is more than eager to put a reader’s mind at ease. In a footnote, Bove wrote that the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan had written a memo noting that Bove himself had told Adams’s lawyers that “the government is not offering to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement.” Adams, for his part, has now reportedly........

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