Trump says he would consider pardoning NYC Mayor Eric Adams

President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that he’d consider pardoning Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams was indicted in September on bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy charges, as well as soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.

Some of the charges date back to Adams’ time serving as Brooklyn Borough President, with investigators alleging he accepted freebies from officials from Turkey, among other misdeeds . ‘Yeah, I would, yeah,’ Trump said at Mar-a-Lago Monday when asked about a pardon for Adams. ‘I think he was treated pretty unfairly.’

Trump noted that he wasn’t aware of the full extent of the charges. ‘Now I haven’t seen the gravity of it all. But it seems, you know, like being upgraded on an airplane many years ago. I know probably everybody here’s been upgraded,’ the president-elect said to the 20 or so reporters standing in Mar-a-Lago’s ornate living room for his first press conference since winning the 2024 election .

‘They see you’re all stars and they say, “I want to upgrade that person from NBC, I’m going to upgrade him,”‘ Trump said ‘And that would mean you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.’ Trump also pushed, without evidence, that Adams’ indictment was politically motivated by his strong words about illegal immigration.

‘You know it’s very interesting, when he essentially went against what was happening with the migrants coming in,’ Trump said, pointing out that Adams made some ‘pretty strong statements’ and said ‘this is not sustainable.’ That viewpoint is more in line with Trump’s immigration stance than most members of the Democratic Party.

‘I said, “you know what, he’ll be indicted soon.” And I said it, not as a prediction, a little bit lightheartedly but I said it, I said, “he’s going to be indicted,” and a few months later he got indicted,’ Trump said. ‘So, I would certainly look at it,’ the incoming president added.

Trump has already vowed to pardon a number of individuals involved in the January 6th Capitol attack but wouldn’t go into whether it would be a blanket pardon or not during Monday’s Mar-a-Lago press conference. He pardoned droves of his political allies when he was leaving office after losing the election to President Joe Biden in 2020.

Adams has expressed an openness to working with Trump, a fellow New York City guy, when he gets sworn-in in January. On Thursday, Adams met with incoming Trump ‘Border Czar’ Tom Homan and said afterward that they agreed New York City couldn’t be a ‘safe haven’ for immigrants who commit crimes. ‘His goal is the same goal I have,’ Adams said of Homan, one of the proponents of Trump’s controversial child separation policy during the Republican’s first term. ‘We cannot allow dangerous acts of violence in our cities across America.’

New York is technically a ‘sanctuary city,’ but Adams has pushed that local authorities should work with federal authorities to deport immigrants who commit crimes. New York’s City Council would determine if New York changed its ‘sanctuary city’ status, though the mayor said he’s looking into executive actions he can take that would allow local law enforcement to cooperate with the feds. So-called ‘sanctuary cities’ are jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

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