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It’s not hard to find hostage videos online, if for some reason you’re into that sort of thing. Seeing one broadcast live on national television is more unusual, but that’s exactly what happened this morning. New York Mayor Eric Adams and the Trump-administration border czar Tom Homan appeared together on the Fox & Friends couch, where hizzoner pledged cooperation with the federal government on immigration and Homan pledged in graphic terms to hold him to that.

“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch—I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” Homan warned. Federal officials have Adams, a Democrat, where they want him: They’ve ordered that the federal criminal charges against him be suspended, and now he has no choice but to do exactly what the White House wants. Humiliating as shameless a figure as Adams is no mean feat, but Donald Trump seems to have managed it.

This awkward scene was the culmination of what host Steve Doocy delicately described as a “very busy week” for Adams. On Monday, the Justice Department dropped charges against the mayor, who was indicted in September for a series of alleged bribery and campaign-finance offenses so elaborate that you’d have to go all the way across the Hudson River to New Jersey to find anything remotely comparable. As my colleague Jonathan Chait wrote, this was one of a series of Trump-administration actions that suggest that bribery is now effectively legal.

Because it’s turtles all the way down, the federal prosecutor overseeing the Southern District of New York now alleges that the suspension of charges was itself effectively a bribe. Danielle Sassoon, who led the prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, is no liberal softy: She’s a Federalist Society member and a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. The Trump administration elevated her to lead the office until a permanent U.S. attorney is confirmed, but she resigned yesterday in protest of the Adams case being dismissed. “Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,” Sassoon wrote in her resignation letter.

She added that Emil Bove, Trump’s former defense attorney and now the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, “admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.” That seems suspicious, but then again, Bove made the Trump-Adams deal nearly explicit in his memo instructing Sassoon to suspend the charges: “The pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.”

What federal immigration policies have to do with Adams’s alleged crimes, or why his personal defense would interfere with enforcement, is not something Bove makes clear—but the Fox News interview makes it plain. Adams, staring straight ahead and seeming uncharacteristically restrained, pledged to assist the federal government in detaining and deporting unauthorized immigrants, while Homan loomed inches away, watching him carefully.

“We’re allowed to disagree!” Adams said brightly when he and Homan offered conflicting views about “sanctuary city” laws. Homan, tight-lipped, didn’t appear to agree, and he may be right. “Now I have him on the couch in front of millions of people, and he can’t back out now,” Homan said. Indeed, the leverage that the Trump administration has is simple and effective: If Adams doesn’t cooperate, the Justice Department could refile the charges against him.

Adams also denied Sassoon’s claim of a quid pro quo: “C’mon, this is silly.” Yes, who could be so ridiculous as to think that Adams, a man charged with trading special-city consideration for airline perks and illegal campaign donations, might try to engage in such a deal? Trump also says that no quid pro quo was involved, but he said the same in 2019, when he attempted to extract law-enforcement assistance from another vulnerable government official, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. (It’s the New York City of Eastern Europe.)

Even as the Justice Department lets Adams skate—for now—the incident has provided a vivid illustration of precisely why government corruption is so dangerous. A public official who engages in alleged illegal behavior makes themselves susceptible to outside forces that might seek to influence their decision making and subvert the will of their constituents. Usually, that’s a private party or a foreign government. In this case, the person squeezing Adams just happens to be the president of the United States.