The mayor’s malleability

To the editor:

Why is Eric Adams still mayor? He faces multiple federal counts of corruption and an April trial.  A number of his highly paid top-level appointees, cronies that are often part of his extended, political family, have left the administration under a cloud of suspicion.

Adams vehemently denies he’s done anything wrong.  However, as a New Yorker cartoon observed some years ago, “The mark of true leadership is knowing when to resign in disgrace.” Governor Kathy Hochul has the power to remove our unbalanced mayor. She apparently lacks the nerve, though, even if she did tell Adams to clean house. That’s the main reason the cronies are gone. 

The mayor no longer calls himself the “Joe Biden of Brooklyn.” In fact, he blames his troubles and that of the city, both interchangeable in his mind, on the Biden administration. Not only has it failed to close the border and fix the broken immigration system, about which Adams knows next to nothing, but also it failed to give the city $6.4 billion dollars to pay for the cost of the influx of migrants. Adams, without providing any evidence, has repeatedly suggested that his criticism of Biden’s immigration policy resulted in a politically-motivated prosecution of Eric Adams.

Adams has been unusually friendly to Trump who also has accused the Biden administration of politically motivated prosecutions for the Jan. 20, 2021 riot at the Capitol, and the removal of top secret documents.  

The soon-to-be president has the power to pardon Adams or instruct his new attorney general to drop corruption charges against him. Do the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers, who oppose Trump and dread what his administration will mean for our city and the country, want Adams to pander to a Trump administration in order to alleviate his own legal problems?

Howard Elterman