President Trump says he would consider pardoning Mayor Adams after he was indicted on corruption charges for allegedly taking gifts and favors from Turkish officials over the course of the last several years. Trump claimed that the mayor was only prosecuted because he spoke out against the border crisis. 

At his Mar-a-Lago club on Monday, Trump was asked if he would ever consider a pardon for the mayor. 

“Yeah, I would. I think that he was treated pretty unfairly,” Trump responded after a lengthy pause. 

“I haven’t seen the gravity of it all, but it seems, you know, like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago — I know probably everybody here has been upgraded. They see you’re all stars,” Trump said to a chuckle from the assembled reporters. Mr. Adams has been accused by federal prosecutors of accepting luxury flights from agents of the Turkish government in exchange for favorable treatment by the city’s government. 

Trump says that he predicted months ago that he thought Mr. Adams would face some kind of charges because the mayor had spoken out forcefully against the chaos at the southern border over the past three years which resulted in tens of thousands of migrants being relocated to New York City. 

“I’d have to see it because I don’t know the facts,” the president-elect added of Mr. Adams’s indictment. “He essentially went against what was happening with the migrants coming in. You know, he made some pretty strong statements, you know, ‘This is not sustainable.’ I said, you know what, he’ll be indicted soon, and I said it not as a prediction — a little bit lightheartedly … and a few months later he got indicted.”

Mr. Adams faced harsh criticism in recent days for meeting with Trump’s incoming White House border tsar Tom Homan, who has promised to implement Trump’s plan for “the largest deportation operation” in American history, which could include family separation. 

“His goal is the same goal I have,” Mr. Adams told reporters after meeting with Mr. Homan. “We cannot allow dangerous individuals to commit repeated violent acts of violence in our cities across America.”

According to CNN, Mr. Adams had a falling out with President Biden and White House officials in 2023 after criticizing the administration for its border and immigration policies. The mayor was reportedly disinvited from a meeting at the White House because of his comments.