An Indicted Mayor and an Indicted Former President, and the Parallels Between

Eric Adams and Donald Trump, two political shape-shifters, have both insisted they’re victims of partisan prosecutions.

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Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, faces five federal charges. He was arraigned on Friday and released on his own recognizance.

It was not long after Eric Adams became mayor of New York City in 2022 that the comparisons with Donald J. Trump started.

Mr. Adams called himself the Biden of Brooklyn, but his style was far more similar to the man President Biden defeated in the 2020 election.

Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Adams has repeatedly bashed the press coverage he has received since he took office. “We have to tell our news publications: Enough, enough, enough,” said Mr. Adams, who is a former police officer and the city’s second Black mayor and who created his own newsletter to circumvent the local media covering him, in late 2022.

Both try to demonstrate what Mr. Adams has called “swagger,” a macho patina of toughness. Both have projected law-and-order strength while surrounding themselves with people under legal scrutiny of their own.

And both have insisted they’re victims of political efforts to prosecute them for their stances on issues, prosecutions that they insist are the real corruption, not their own actions.

Mr. Adams will now test how far he can take the Trump playbook in seeking to remain in office. It remains to be seen whether the forces of political gravity that usually come with an indictment will drag him down. Mr. Trump will face a similar test in less than six weeks of whether his criminal travails will prevent him from winning the presidential election despite broad support within his party.

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