During the Biden administration, the Department of Justice brought charges against Indian billionaire Gautam Adani for wire fraud and securities fraud in connection with a foreign bribery scheme. That legal case survived into the Trump administration … until Adani hired a new legal team headed by one of President Trump’s personal lawyers. That team made a pitch to DOJ lawyers to drop the case that, shockingly, included reference to a proposed investment in the U.S.
The charges were dropped soon after. Though DOJ and Adani have denied any direct exchange, the judge assigned to the case tore into the dismissal process as irregular and unusually opaque.
CBS News reports:
In a scathing 47-page ruling, Garaufis took aim at Trent McCotter, the principal associate deputy attorney general, who he said bears sole responsibility for trying to dismiss the case. “The irregularities in the decision to dismiss the indictment are concerning,” Garaufis wrote. “On the current record, McCotter appears to have eschewed the professional opinions of innumerable officials from various federal offices and replaced them with his singular judgment. The fact that McCotter came to this decision largely in collaboration with defense counsel, and seemingly without input from the FBI and SEC agents who investigated the alleged misconduct, or the attorneys from the Department, SEC, and U.S. Attorney’s Office who brought the case, appears to be highly unusual.” … McCotter made the determination after he and other government officials met with McDonald, Giuffra and Andrew DeFilippis of Sullivan & Cromwell, sources previously told CBS News. McDonald has since been nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Two career prosecutors who were involved in the case withdrew from the matter after the motion to dismiss was filed. Additionally, politically appointed officials—the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and McCotter—were the only signatories on the motion to dismiss. McCotter initially pushed back when Garaufis first started raising questions about the motion to dismiss the case, prompting the judge to order Adani last month to provide answers to the court on whether there was any sort of quid pro quo arrangement. Adani ultimately told the judge no such arrangement existed.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this story isn’t the dismissal itself. It’s the fact that a billionaire’s lawyer was confident enough in the lawlessness and corruption of the current administration to feel comfortable openly making this kind of offer. (Bribery and obstruction charges against five other defendants in the case remain pending; the judge has ordered DOJ to justify those dismissals separately.)
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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