When asked if he would consider the pardon, Trump said, “Yeah I would. I think that he was treated pretty unfairly.”
Among the federal charges is that Adams accepted a flight upgrade and other travel accommodations.
Trump said Adams’s airplane upgrade was “many years ago” and that he would have “to look at the facts” before deciding.
Speaking at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Trump said he foresaw Adams’s indictment after the mayor spoke out against the illegal immigrant surge into New York City as “unsustainable.”
“I said he’s going to be indicted, and a few months later, he got indicted,” Trump said. “I would certainly look at it.”
The indictment alleged that as Adams’s mayoral influence grew, foreign nationals exploited their relationship with him, which Adams allowed by “providing favorable treatment in exchange for illicit benefits he received,” the indictment said.
Adams pleaded not guilty to the charges.
After his indictment, New York City Deputy Mayor Philip Banks, New York Police Department Commissioner Edward Caban, and Adams’s closest aide, Timothy Pearson, resigned from office amid the federal probe of the mayor’s alleged illegal campaign activity.
At the press conference, Trump addressed a wide range of topics, including pointing to what he saw as a return of economic progress, peace, and overall optimism to the country and the world.
“What’s happening with the world ... there’s a whole light over the entire world,” he said.
He said that on his first day in office, he would issue “old reforms” to bring about “full prosperity” by cutting “job-killing” regulations and returning to the construction of the border wall.
“We spent a tremendous amount of money building the wall,” Trump said, adding that 571 miles of wall designed by the border patrol were built under his administration.
However, the Biden administration, he said, is selling sections of the wall, which is increasing the costs for continued construction.
“If we don’t have it, we’re going to have to rebuild it, and it will cost double what it cost years ago, and that’s hundreds of millions of dollars,” Trump said.
He called on the Biden administration to end the policy, adding that it goes against the tradition of having a “smooth transition of power.”
Trump said that his newly established Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will “eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud.”
When asked about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s plan to investigate a link between vaccines and autism if he’s confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Trump said Kennedy is “going to be much less radical than you would think.”
“I think he’s got a very open mind,” Trump said. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have put him there.”
