Opinion | Refusing to Carry Out Trump’s Flagrantly Dishonest Orders

In the case of Mr. Adams, the president and the Justice Department are sending a message that they intend to dispense with the impartiality, precedents, norms and very laws on which the American justice system depends. In seeking dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams “without prejudice,” the Justice Department is sending the clear message that they can be reinstated, should he stray from the Trump line.

All of this leaves New York City with a mayor plainly unfit for office, whose credible accusations of corruption — let’s remember that five aides or associates of Mr. Adams have been charged as well, and seven others have left office under pressure — are now joined by the strongest possible disincentive to cross the president in any way. If he is loyal to the great city he was elected to lead, he will resign. Many leading New York political leaders have already demanded that he do so. Some of them have also demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul take immediate action to use her legal authority to fire him if he continues to refuse to do so.

Ms. Hochul has wisely resisted that path. At a time when Mr. Trump is so brazenly attacking democratic norms through overreaching assertions of executive branch authority, the idea that Ms. Hochul would take the unprecedented step of removing a democratically elected official outside of the traditional electoral process is unwise. Though the situations are quite different — Ms. Hochul actually has the legal authority for such an action, something Mr. Trump has lacked in so many of his early moves — this is not the time for Democratic Party leaders to muddy the waters around respect for democratic norms, especially when they need to make the case against Mr. Trump’s subversion of the rule of law. More appropriately, the City Charter has provisions for a five-member “committee on mayoral inability” to remove him, though the presence of Mr. Adams’s appointees may make this outcome less likely.

In the meantime, Ms. Hochul, other elected officials and leaders in the city, state and Democratic Party — many who have called for his resignation — should press Mr. Adams to resign on his own accord. And it will be important for officials, including state prosecutors, to continue to hold him to account for any illegal or unethical moves. (Many of the actions cited by federal prosecutors would also constitute state crimes, and could be investigated and charged by the Manhattan district attorney.) If it comes to it, New York City voters will have the final say on Mr. Adams’s political future in the Democratic mayoral primary in June, in which he is likely to be a candidate, or in the general election in November.

Appealing to the better instincts of this new Trump administration — with its open disdain for law and morality — has so far proven a losing proposition. And it would be naïve to hope that the public backlash to this abuse of power will give Mr. Trump and Attorney General Bondi real pause about such further abuses in the future. But the efforts of prosecutors, civil servants, elected officials and others to document and decry this injustice, and to stand up and even resign in the face of this administration’s transgressions, matters enormously. The attempt to dismiss the charges against Mr. Adams must still come before the federal district judge assigned to the case, Dale Ho, and he may yet conduct a thorough inquiry on the government’s action.