A senior Justice Department official suggested Wednesday that President Trump’s administration is justified in prioritizing a public official’s political cooperation over prosecutors’ suspicions that the official might have broken the law.

The official, Emil Bove III, raised the idea during a hearing on Wednesday at which a judge asked him to explain his rationale for abandoning a corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.

In response to questions from the judge, Mr. Bove renewed his assertion that the prosecution should be dismissed because it was hindering Mr. Adams’s cooperation with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The judge, Dale E. Ho, asked whether that logic could apply to other officials with critical public safety and national security responsibilities in New York. “Like the police commissioner, for example?” the judge asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” Mr. Bove said.

Mr. Bove’s striking response appears to be the first time the Trump Justice Department has said publicly that its rationale for seeking dismissal of the corruption charges against the mayor could apply more broadly. His answer underscored how the Justice Department has begun to shift into an enforcement arm of Mr. Trump's agenda.

Judge Ho ended the hearing Wednesday without ruling on whether he would grant the government’s request to drop the charges. But the exchange emphasized the knotty issues at play in the Adams case, and the judge’s restraint prolonged a turbulent episode that has shaken the Justice Department, led to the resignations of at least eight prosecutors and resulted in calls for the mayor to leave office.