Eric Adams Curried Favor With Trump for Months

Before the Department of Justice instructed federal prosecutors to drop the charges against him, Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, had spent months making overtures to President Trump, a Republican.Now Mr.

Trump has helped deliver the mayor a legal reprieve less than a month into his term, a stunning gesture in a political dalliance that has confounded many Democrats and even some Republicans.Mr.Adams has declined to criticize Mr.

Trump or his policies and has signaled a desire to work with the new administration.On Monday, he encouraged senior city officials to follow his lead, warning that criticizing the Trump administration could jeopardize federal funding for the city.During the presidential campaign, Mr.

Adams eventually acknowledged that he planned to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, but he also occasionally defended Mr.Trump, saying he should not be described as “fascist” or likened to Hitler.

Mr.Adams was a registered Republican in the 1990s.After the election, Mr.

Adams expressed his enthusiasm for the billionaire Elon Musk, one of Mr.Trump’s most prominent boosters and the president’s pick to lead a new government cost-cutting initiative.

In December, the mayor also met with the president’s so-called border czar, Thomas D.Homan, who had been tapped to oversee a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Mr.Adams said that he and Mr.

Homan shared “the same desire” to detain undocumented immigrants who commit crimes in New York City.And then, just days before the president’s inauguration, Mr.Adams made a surprise visit to Florida, dining with Mr.

Trump near his Mar-a-Lago compound.The mayor described the meeting as “productive.” He also accepted an 11th-hour invitation to attend the inauguration, skipping two events he had been scheduled to attend in New York City to honor Martin Luther King’s Birthday.

At one of the events, Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, called Mr.Adams’s decision “disturbing.”For his part, ...