New York City (NYC) Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has sued the Trump administration even though the Trump administration is currently trying to get federal charges against him dropped.
Adams’ administration filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.
The suit demands that the Trump administration return $80.5 million in congressionally approved funds that the Adams administration had been using to take care of illegal aliens.
The suit further argues that the seizing of this $80.5 million from City Hall violated federal laws, grant terms, and regulations.
The $80 million was approved, paid for, and then rescinded, all while our city spent more than $7 billion of our own funds over the last three years.
We are going to work to ensure our city’s residents get every dollar they are owed.
Read more: https://t.co/QP39zYkvc9
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) February 21, 2025
“Without a doubt, our immigration system is broken, but the cost of managing an international humanitarian crisis should not overwhelmingly fall onto one city alone,” Adams said in a statement.
“With very little help from the federal government, our administration has skillfully managed an unprecedented crisis which has seen over 231,000 people enter our city asking for shelter. The $80 million that FEMA approved, paid, and then rescinded — after the city spent more than $7 billion in the last three years — is the bare minimum our taxpayers deserve,” he added.
The money was suddenly taken from City Hall on Feb. 11th, days after Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk reported on Twitter/X that DOGE had discovered $59 million in federal funds that’d been used to house illegal aliens in NYC’s “luxury hotels.”
Look:
The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.
Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.
That money is meant for American disaster relief…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025
After the money was taken, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander accused Musk of having stolen the money.
“Today … my @NYCComptroller office discovered that $80 MILLION in already authorized, allocated, and paid federal aid was WIPED from the City’s bank account,” he tweeted.
“Let’s be crystal clear: This is highway robbery. Elon Musk, with no legal authority, illegally seized federal funds from New Yorkers,” he added.
Note that the money was allocated during the Biden administration.
“New York City applied for and was awarded two separate grants of $58.6 million and $21.9 million under the Biden administration,” according to the New York Post. “The payments were then made under the Shelter and Services Program which Congress appropriated $650 million toward in 2024.”
After Adams’ administration filed suit Friday, Lander celebrated.
“As my office discovered that Elon Musk and his DOGE goon squad stole $80 million out of the City’s coffers, we successfully pressured Mayor Adams to allow the City’s lawyers to sue the federal government to get our money back,” he said in a statement.
“The lawyers who are standing up to President Trump and Eric Adams’ collusion deserve praise and we look forward to Donald Trump returning the money he stole from New York,” he added.
All this comes as Adams is facing calls for his resignation or ouster. His critics have bizarrely accused him of doing the Trump administration’s bidding on immigration (never mind the lawsuit) in return for the administration dropping Biden-era bribery charges against him.
Speaking of which, District Court Judge Dale Ho, a leftist Biden appointee, declined on Friday to immediately drop the charges against Adams, despite pleading from Trump administration officials.
Biden judicial nominee Dale Ho calls the Senate “anti-democratic.”pic.twitter.com/5GSu7k3r65
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 16, 2021
Instead, Ho designated an outside attorney, Paul Clement, to argue against the Trump administration.
“Normally, courts are aided in their decision-making through our system of adversarial testing, which can be particularly helpful in cases presenting unusual fact patterns or in cases of great public importance,” he ruled.
“Here, the recent conference helped clarify the parties’ respective positions, but there has been no adversarial testing of the Government’s position generally or the form of its requested relief specifically,” his ruling continued.
NEW: Judge Dale Ho appoints Paul Clement to present “friend of the court” arguments on the government’s motion to dismiss Eric Adams’s charges. pic.twitter.com/aSuwIO2aDq
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) February 21, 2025
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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