On Feb. 19, Judge Dale E. Ho ’99 presided over a hearing on the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Ho did not make a ruling, stating at the end of the trial that it was a “very complicated situation” and that he did not want to “shoot from the hip.”
In September 2024, Adams was indicted on five charges, including bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, moved to dismiss the case, stating in the submitted motion that the case had “appearances of impropriety” and risked interfering with “the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City.” In a memo to New York prosecutors last week, Bove wrote that the charges have “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime.”
“I don’t envy his position, but I admire the fact that at such a young age, he’s already reached a point where he gets to decide issues that have significant results for the life of the country,” said Alexander Nehamas, Ho’s senior thesis advisor at Princeton and a Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy from 1989 to 2021.
At Princeton, Ho majored in Philosophy, graduating summa cum laude. Nehamas said that Ho was “one of the best students I’ve had at Princeton.”
Ho’s 123-page thesis, which was entitled “Nietzsche, Genealogy, Politics: An Examination of the Political Implications of Genealogy in the Work of Nietzsche and Foucault,” received the highest honors, which Nehamas noted is “very rare” in the philosophy department.
Nehamas was not surprised after seeing Ho’s name in the headlines after graduating. “I was convinced he would have an important career in whatever he wanted to do,” Nehamas said. “He was a very, very impressive student.”
Ho also diercted and acted in numerous plays at Princeton. He had “a great talent” for theater during his time at Princeton according to Karron Graves ’99, who acted alongside Ho.
“[Ho is] a humble and trustworthy man,” Graves told The Daily Princetonian.
Notably, Ho directed Theatre Intime’s first show with an all-Asian cast and crew, a staging of David Henry Hwang’s “Fresh off the Boat.” In an interview with the ‘Prince’ in January 1998, he said that there are “important reasons to do an American-Asian show,” mentioning the need for “a diverse group of shows” to be performed at Princeton. He also wrote for The Princeton Progressive, a left-leaning student magazine.
Ho continued to engage with the issue of diversity on Princeton’s campus, even after graduation. In a Letter to the Editor written after the 2007 ‘Prince’ joke issue — which drew controversy for its parody of an Asian-American student who sued Princeton, claiming he was denied admission because of his race — Ho wrote that “[the article] crossed the line between satirizing stereotypes and exploiting them for cheap laughs.”
Before becoming a federal judge, Ho was the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Voting Rights Project and supervised the ACLU’s voting rights litigation for a decade. During this time, Dale argued two cases against Trump before the Supreme Court.
Ho was also an advocate in Department of Commerce v. New York, which successfully challenged the inclusion of a citizenship question on the census, and in Trump v. New York, which unsuccessfully challenged the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from the population figures used to determine congressional apportionment.
Ho was nominated to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by former President Joe Biden in 2021. After a long and contentious confirmation process, he was confirmed by the Senate on Jun. 14, 2023, in a 50–49 vote.
Now, as a second-year judge, Ho is overseeing the first criminal prosecution of a sitting mayor in New York City. Last year, Ho detailed how criminal law is an area he does not “have a lot of experience in.” After the hearing on Wednesday, he said he plans to be “mindful of my role” as the case continues.
Adams’ trial is currently scheduled to start on April 21.
Nikki Han is an assistant News editor and a contributing Features writer. She is from Sydney, Australia, and runs the Faculty, Graduate Students, and Alumni coverage area.
Clara Docherty is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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