Politics

Eric Adams hopes Supreme Court’s curbing of corruption prosecutions helps gut his own

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Eric Adams hopes Supreme Court’s curbing of corruption prosecutions helps gut his own

When the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the use of federal bribery law against state and local officials this past term, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent called the “absurd and atextual reading of the statute” one that “only today’s Court could love.”

Eric Adams might love it, too.

Ask Jordan questions during his Reddit AMA on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ETwhere he will discuss the biggest cases of the Supreme Court’s next term.

On Monday, New York City’s first indicted sitting mayor moved to dismiss the federal bribery charge against him, citing that recent Supreme Court precedent, called Snyder v. United States.

“Just three months ago, the Supreme Court rebuked the Justice Department for adopting an ‘unfathomable’ interpretation of the federal-program bribery statute,” the Democratic mayor’s lawyers wrote in their trial court motionciting the Snyder case.

“Yet here goes the Department again,” they argued, surmising that:

It appears that after years of casting about for something, anything, to support a federal charge against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, prosecutors had settled on a theory that depended on the Department’s longstanding view that Section 666 [the bribery law at issue] criminalizes gratuities, including gifts meant to curry favor with governmental officials but not linked to any specific question or matter. When the Supreme Court rejected that interpretation in June, prosecutors simply added a few vague allegations and called their theory bribery — “a far more serious offense than gratuities” [a quote from the Snyder opinion].

Arguing that “the government’s makeover doesn’t work,” Adams’ lawyers wrote:

The indictment does not allege that Mayor Adams agreed to perform any official act at the time that he received a benefit. Rather, it alleges only that while serving as Brooklyn Borough President –not Mayor, or even Mayor-elect — he agreed generally to assist with the ‘operation’ or ‘regulation’ of a Turkish Consulate building in Manhattan, where he had no authority whatsoever, in exchange for travel benefits (e.g., upgrades to vacant business-class seats and a car ride to a restaurant).

They concluded the 25-page filing by writing:

In short, the bribery count in the indictment suffers from the same fundamental legal problems that have long plagued the Justice Department’s aggressive targeting of prominent public officials: a sweeping view of federal statutes that criminalizes routine conduct and replaces measured ethics rules with the blunt force of federal criminal law. The consequence is a lack of fair notice to defendants and the kind of highly selective enforcement on display here.

Now, this is the type of argument that the Supreme Court has embraced in recent years — not just in the Snyder case but also in a string of appeals dating back at least to the 2016 ruling in favor of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell that narrowed corruption-related prosecutions.

It’s too early to know whether Adams, who has pleaded not guilty, will be able to successfully harness that judicial skepticism to get out of his indictment, which we’re all still digesting. But however heavy-handed the defense argument sounds, it’s the sort of claim that Adams’ lawyers would be foolish not to make, given the state of the law and the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department will get to respond to Adams’ motion, and federal prosecutors will likely disagree with both the defendant’s understanding of the law and how it applies to the facts of his case. (Adams’ motion only concerns the bribery allegation, and we should expect him to separately challenge the other charges in the indictment, including those related to allegedly illegal campaign contribution dealings.)

Indeed, prosecutors probably aren’t too surprised at Adams’ argument. At least they shouldn’t be. In strategizing the case, they likely will have considered the charges against the backdrop of how they would fare on an inevitable appeal if there’s a conviction. But however damning the allegations against the mayor may seem, the justices seemingly stand ready to save white-collar defendants from charges that might possibly be seen as criminalizing politics, however shady that politics is.

TheDeadline: Legal Newsletterreturns Oct. 4.Subscribefor expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the new Supreme Court term and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.

Jordan Rubin

Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined BLN, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”