Does the indictment of Eric Adams represent a bona fide prosecution of a dishonest politician, or is it mainly retribution against a political opponent by a deeply corrupt DOJ and FBI?  As several commenters on yesterday’s post noted, we have come to a very sad point when our first thought upon an indictment of a politician is that it may well represent the deep state using its powers to take out a political opponent.  But after four years of the deeply politicized Biden-Harris-Garland Justice Department, that’s where we are.  And it is entirely appropriate for the citizenry to evaluate the present indictment in light of the DOJ’s conduct throughout the course of this administration.    

Unlike my usual approach, I wrote the post yesterday immediately after learning about and reading the indictment, and before allowing any time for things to settle down.  Today many other voices have weighed in.  In this post I’ll consider a few of them.  But the bottom line is, there is every reason to believe that this indictment is mostly politically motivated, and has little or nothing to do with fighting real corruption.

Let’s look first at a few things that might at first seem to support the bona fides of the indictment.  The New York Post today in its news pages devotes six pages to the charges.  Most of that coverage just runs through and highlights the allegations, thus giving them substantial credibility, whether deserved or not.  

Here is an example.  The headline for the article on page 4 is “Fancy flights, $10M for elex in fed raps.”  (The online headline is different, but similarly references the allegation that Adams “fraudulently got $10M in public funds.”). Is there really a charge in this indictment that Adams fraudulently got $10 million in public campaign funds?  If so, that would be a big deal, perhaps even on a par with Biden’s collecting $10 million from the government of China.  But in fact the $10 million figure is almost entirely unrelated to the actual charges in the case and was clearly thrown in in a disgraceful effort to prejudice Adams.