Rep. Zinke defends DOJ order to drop Eric Adams charges: 'Immigration' is 'priority'

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) on Sunday defended the Department of Justice's (DOJ) order for federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

"Well, I think the priority would be immigration," Zinke said in an interview on NewsNation's "The Hill Sunday" when asked to explain why the order to drop charges is not an example of politicization at the DOJ in favor of President Trump.

Zinke noted that "the charges were many" against Adams, "but I think the big thrust is immigration. New York is our largest city. It should be a shining city, and it's not. And a lot of it is the immigration. And look, you can't walk down the streets without being harassed, so something's got to change."

“The president looked at it, the priorities. He's got to work with New York. He found a willing partner. Just make sure that the city gets cleaned up,” Zinke continued.

"Obviously, the Trump administration looked at it and said, 'You know what? What's more important right now is getting New York back to safety and getting the illegal immigration problem out of New York,'" he later added.

The remarks come just days after Trump’s DOJ ordered federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against the mayor, who had cozied up to the president in recent months as his bribery trial set for April neared.

Adams was indicted in September on counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national and bribery. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to dismiss the counts without assessing the strength of the case and indicated that the attorneys who filed the charges did nothing wrong

Instead, he said the case “improperly interfered” with Adams’s 2025 mayoral campaign and “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to focus on “the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.”

The move prompted concerns about a possible quid pro quo, and it led to the resignations of the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan and several other federal prosecutors who refused to drop the charges against Adams.

On Friday, Trump shrugged off the resignations, suggesting that all the top prosecutors would have been dismissed anyway in the coming days.

"I don't know about it," Trump said in the Oval Office when asked about the controversy in the Adams case. "Obviously, I'm not involved in that, but I would say this. If they had a problem — and these are mostly people from the previous administration, you understand. So they weren't going to be there anyway. They were all going to be gone or dismissed … because what you do is you come in and you put new people in."

“So when you say resigned, they were gonna be gone anyway,” Trump continued. “But I know nothing about the individual case. I know that they didn’t feel it was much of a case. They also felt that it was unfair with the election.”

The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns NewsNation.

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