The city’s Law Department will not represent Mayor Adams or his administration in the City Council’s lawsuit against him over an executive order that would allow federal immigration authorities on Rikers, according to court papers filed Wednesday.
“The New York City Law Department has advised that they will not be representing any party in this litigation,” Allison Stoddart, the mayor’s chief counsel, wrote in the letter to the Manhattan Supreme Court clerk last night.
This is an unusual move by the Law Department, which typically represents the mayoral administration, including in cases brought by the Council. A spokesperson for the Law Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The mayor, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro and the city’s Department of Corrections will instead seek outside counsel, Stoddart wrote.
The Council sued the administration on Tuesday, claiming that the order was unlawfully issued by Mastro as the “poisoned fruit” of a corrupt quid pro quo deal with the Trump administration. They are asking for the court to rescind the order and block the administration from allowing ICE on the complex.
“I cannot recall a single instance in which the Law Department elected not to represent this mayor, or prior ones, when that officeholder was sued in his official capacity. The only rational conclusion that can be drawn from this remarkable decision was that the Law Department as an institution could not stand behind the Mayor and the First Deputy Mayor’s actions,” the Council’s lawyer, Jason Otaño, wrote in a response.
Stoddart’s letter called the lawsuit “premature” since ICE has not actually moved into Rikers office space yet, as there’s not a memorandum of understanding between the city and feds that would formalize the decision.
She wrote that the administration wanted to move forward on putting together the memo with the understanding that the Council would be given advance notice before it became effective.
Mayor Adams has been widely accused of entering into a corrupt bargain with the Trump administration. After being indicted on federal corruption charges in September, Adams’ lawyers pleaded his case to Trump’s Department of Justice, saying the case impended his ability to carry out the president’s immigration agenda in the city.
The DOJ moved to dismiss the case in February, and the judge in the case dropped the case earlier this month.
The council’s suit argues that Adams had agreed to a quid pro quo with the Trump administration, agreeing to exchange the Rikers order for the feds working to drop his case. Adams has denied any quid pro quo exists. Mastro’s signing off on the order didn’t change that, the Council argues.
“The mayor’s decision to have Mastro issue the executive order … does not magically cleanse the taint of conflict from the order,” reads the petition.
Meanwhile, the mayor’s’ legal defense trust is more than $3 million in the negative after Adams did not receive a single contribution in the latest reporting period, leaving him with a huge debt to deal with even as he celebrates the dismissal of his federal corruption case, a new filing reveals.
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