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Sunday, February 16, 2025 7:24:02 PM
Justice officials move to drop Adams case after 7 lawyers refuse, resign in protest
"Massacre’: Six DOJ officials resign in protest of ‘dangerous’ Trump abuse in widening scanda"
Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove told prosecutors in Washington to find someone who would seek to have the case dismissed, or risk losing their jobs
Updated February 14, 2025
New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
By Jeremy Roebuck, Shayna Jacobs, Mark Berman and Carol D. Leonnig
The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, leaving it to a federal judge to decide the fate of a case that has ignited a dramatic standoff between the Trump administration and veteran prosecutors in two cities.
The motion, filed in a New York court, was signed by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove; Edward Sullivan, a veteran public corruption prosecutor; and Toni Bacon, acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, after seven other Justice Department lawyers had refused and resigned in protest.
Bove instructed prosecutors in New York on Monday to drop the charges, saying the case could interfere with the mayor’s reelection bid and his efforts to work with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement. He said his decision was not based on a consideration of the evidence or the legal theories underpinning the case.
Danielle Sassoon .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/danielle-sassoon-quits-new-york-prosecutor/ .. acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, quit instead and accused President Donald Trump’s appointees of acting for political, rather than legal, reasons. Nearly all of the supervisors within the Justice Department’s public integrity section followed suit.
The tensions only grew Friday, as the lead prosecutor on the case in New York, Hagan Scotten, submitted his resignation .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/hagan-scotten-letter-eric-adams-resign/ , calling any lawyer who would ask a judge to toss the charges a “fool” or “coward.”
Bove, meanwhile, summoned the roughly two dozen remaining members of the public integrity unit and ordered them to figure out who would file the dismissal motion. He made clear that lawyers not willing to do so could be fired and those who were could be promoted, according to multiple people in communication with lawyers at the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose what was said.
[ Insert: Isn't there a law about blatant unethical activity within the DOJ?
https://www.justice.gov/jmd/government-ethics-outline ]
Bove’s push to abandon the case over the past week was endorsed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff. While they ultimately got their way, the effort triggered an extraordinary showdown within the department and a remarkable show of resistance to Bove, a former personal defense lawyer for Trump who previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District.
Lawyers from that office and Justice Department headquarters showed they were not just willing to resign over requests that they believed would violate their legal and ethical obligations, but also to rebuke Bove’s orders in writing .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/0b16892a-b4a3-4511-9eab-44ff6f69a97f.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_4 .. on the way out the door. Their defiance, and the punitive response they received in return, has boosted concerns from outsiders over Trump’s long-term intentions for the department.
“I suspect many Americans have questions today about what’s going on at the Department of Justice and what this means for the rule of law,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under President George W. Bush.
In a Fox News interview Friday, Bondi suggested without evidence that Adams had been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration after he criticized its handling of immigration. Bondi also praised some of Adams’s recent moves in support of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Mizelle issued a statement saying prosecutors who “refused to follow a direct command … have no place at DOJ.”
The four-page filing that sought to dismiss the charges largely echoed Bove’s earlier reasons. It said the case would impede Adams’s ability to carry out his duties as mayor, “which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.” The filing also repeated Bove’s claims that the trial could interfere with the New York mayoral election later this year.
Bove and the others asked Judge Dale E. Ho to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning the prosecutors could opt to revive it in the future and granting the Justice Department remarkable leverage over Adams as the Trump administration has moved to step up immigration enforcement in his city.
Ho has limited if any discretion to question or reject the Justice Department’s request, according to legal experts. He could schedule a hearing and press Justice officials to elaborate on their reasoning.
Besides Scotten and Sassoon, those who resigned in protest this week included Kevin Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division; and John D. Keller, acting chief of the public integrity section, which investigates public officials and election crimes.
Scotten, the former lead prosecutor on the Adams case, is a decorated Iraq War veteran and Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was an appeals court judge.
In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote that he did not view the Trump administration negatively, but considered the request to drop the charges against Adams a serious mistake. “Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” he wrote.
“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten’s letter said. “But it was never going to be me.”
Sassoon, too, has sterling conservative credentials, having clerked for J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
She wrote in a letter to Bondi that she could not in good faith ask a judge to drop the charges against Adams: “The law does not support a dismissal. … I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged.”
Bove responded to Sassoon’s decision with a letter accusing her of insubordination and said he was moving oversight of the Adams case to Washington to get the charges dismissed.
At his meeting with the remaining members of the public integrity section on Friday, Bove said that he and Bondi wanted two people in the unit to sign a motion seeking to dismiss the Adams case, and that their jobs would depend on it, according to multiple people briefed on the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Those not in the building participated by calling in on a conference line, two of the people said.
Bove left the group alone to discuss how its members wished to proceed, saying he wanted an answer quickly, the people briefed on the matter said. One attorney present told a colleague at Justice that the discussion was “gut-wrenching” and “not anything any of us ever expected to see in America,” the colleague told The Washington Post.
At first, the lawyers agreed they would all resign rather than endorse the dismissal of the Adams corruption case, two people briefed on the session said. But then Sullivan, who is nearing retirement, proposed that he could sign the motion to avoid a mass firing of prosecutors and allow his colleagues time to seek jobs elsewhere, these people said.
The group agreed to accept Sullivan’s offer. But some were upset, believing that their section could still face retaliation and that it would be more principled for everyone to refuse to seek to drop the charges.
Sullivan filed the dismissal motion hours later, joined by Bove and Bacon.
Adams was charged in September with wire fraud, bribery and seeking illegal campaign donations. Prosecutors alleged he had problematic relationships with wealthy foreigners and accepted travel upgrades, luxury hotel rooms and other perks from Turkish businesspeople and at least one government official. He pleaded not guilty.
In her resignation letter, Sassoon described a Jan. 31 meeting with Bove and Adams’s attorneys in which she said the mayor’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo,” insisting that Adams could help with the Justice Department’s immigration priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.
“Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” Sassoon wrote.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for the mayor, called the accusation “a total lie.” In a statement released Friday, Adams said he was ready to put the case behind him.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers,” the statement read. “I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”
Adams made two major immigration-related announcements this week, expanding efforts to target gang activity. He appeared on Fox News with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who joked that he would come after Adams if the mayor didn’t keep his promises.
Disputes over legal cases between Justice Department headquarters and U.S. attorney’s offices across the country are not new — especially with the Southern District, known for an independent streak that has earned it the nickname “the Sovereign District of New York.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration also tangled with the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman had prosecuted members of Trump’s inner circle during his years leading the Southern District before Attorney General William P. Barr ousted him in 2020.
Berman initially resisted Barr’s efforts to force him out, and the attorney general fired him. Berman later wrote in a book that Justice Department officials during Trump’s first term had pushed him to take politically motivated actions.
But legal experts called the tenor and tone of the conflict over the Adams case remarkable.
“What’s different about this is the grounds for dismissing the case,” said Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor and former prosecutor with the public integrity unit, pointing to the explicitly political reasons Bove cited for dropping the charges in his memo this week.
Butler said that in prior conflicts within the department, including debates over public corruption cases, “there often are tough issues on both sides. There are legitimate disagreements. And what’s different here is, it seems all about politics.”
Berman and other former U.S. attorneys issued a statement in support of Sassoon on Friday, saying that “her commitment to integrity and the rule of law reflects the finest traditions of the Southern District United States Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice.”
The statement said Bove’s warning that he would investigate Sassoon and other career prosecutors who refused to ask for the case to be dismissed “should concern everyone committed to the pursuit of justice without fear or favor.”
Jacobs reported from New York. Aaron C. Davis, Spencer S. Hsu, Alice Crites, Salvador Rizzo and Perry Stein contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/justice-prosecutors-resignation-trump-eric-adams-corruption/
"Massacre’: Six DOJ officials resign in protest of ‘dangerous’ Trump abuse in widening scanda"
Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove told prosecutors in Washington to find someone who would seek to have the case dismissed, or risk losing their jobs
Updated February 14, 2025
New York Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
By Jeremy Roebuck, Shayna Jacobs, Mark Berman and Carol D. Leonnig
The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, leaving it to a federal judge to decide the fate of a case that has ignited a dramatic standoff between the Trump administration and veteran prosecutors in two cities.
The motion, filed in a New York court, was signed by acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove; Edward Sullivan, a veteran public corruption prosecutor; and Toni Bacon, acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division, after seven other Justice Department lawyers had refused and resigned in protest.
Bove instructed prosecutors in New York on Monday to drop the charges, saying the case could interfere with the mayor’s reelection bid and his efforts to work with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement. He said his decision was not based on a consideration of the evidence or the legal theories underpinning the case.
Danielle Sassoon .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/danielle-sassoon-quits-new-york-prosecutor/ .. acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, quit instead and accused President Donald Trump’s appointees of acting for political, rather than legal, reasons. Nearly all of the supervisors within the Justice Department’s public integrity section followed suit.
The tensions only grew Friday, as the lead prosecutor on the case in New York, Hagan Scotten, submitted his resignation .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/hagan-scotten-letter-eric-adams-resign/ , calling any lawyer who would ask a judge to toss the charges a “fool” or “coward.”
Bove, meanwhile, summoned the roughly two dozen remaining members of the public integrity unit and ordered them to figure out who would file the dismissal motion. He made clear that lawyers not willing to do so could be fired and those who were could be promoted, according to multiple people in communication with lawyers at the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose what was said.
[ Insert: Isn't there a law about blatant unethical activity within the DOJ?
https://www.justice.gov/jmd/government-ethics-outline ]
Bove’s push to abandon the case over the past week was endorsed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff. While they ultimately got their way, the effort triggered an extraordinary showdown within the department and a remarkable show of resistance to Bove, a former personal defense lawyer for Trump who previously worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District.
Lawyers from that office and Justice Department headquarters showed they were not just willing to resign over requests that they believed would violate their legal and ethical obligations, but also to rebuke Bove’s orders in writing .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/0b16892a-b4a3-4511-9eab-44ff6f69a97f.pdf?itid=lk_inline_manual_4 .. on the way out the door. Their defiance, and the punitive response they received in return, has boosted concerns from outsiders over Trump’s long-term intentions for the department.
“I suspect many Americans have questions today about what’s going on at the Department of Justice and what this means for the rule of law,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general under President George W. Bush.
In a Fox News interview Friday, Bondi suggested without evidence that Adams had been unfairly targeted by the Biden administration after he criticized its handling of immigration. Bondi also praised some of Adams’s recent moves in support of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Mizelle issued a statement saying prosecutors who “refused to follow a direct command … have no place at DOJ.”
The four-page filing that sought to dismiss the charges largely echoed Bove’s earlier reasons. It said the case would impede Adams’s ability to carry out his duties as mayor, “which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.” The filing also repeated Bove’s claims that the trial could interfere with the New York mayoral election later this year.
Bove and the others asked Judge Dale E. Ho to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning the prosecutors could opt to revive it in the future and granting the Justice Department remarkable leverage over Adams as the Trump administration has moved to step up immigration enforcement in his city.
Ho has limited if any discretion to question or reject the Justice Department’s request, according to legal experts. He could schedule a hearing and press Justice officials to elaborate on their reasoning.
Besides Scotten and Sassoon, those who resigned in protest this week included Kevin Driscoll, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s criminal division; and John D. Keller, acting chief of the public integrity section, which investigates public officials and election crimes.
Scotten, the former lead prosecutor on the Adams case, is a decorated Iraq War veteran and Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and for Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when Kavanaugh was an appeals court judge.
In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote that he did not view the Trump administration negatively, but considered the request to drop the charges against Adams a serious mistake. “Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” he wrote.
“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten’s letter said. “But it was never going to be me.”
Sassoon, too, has sterling conservative credentials, having clerked for J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
She wrote in a letter to Bondi that she could not in good faith ask a judge to drop the charges against Adams: “The law does not support a dismissal. … I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged.”
Bove responded to Sassoon’s decision with a letter accusing her of insubordination and said he was moving oversight of the Adams case to Washington to get the charges dismissed.
At his meeting with the remaining members of the public integrity section on Friday, Bove said that he and Bondi wanted two people in the unit to sign a motion seeking to dismiss the Adams case, and that their jobs would depend on it, according to multiple people briefed on the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Those not in the building participated by calling in on a conference line, two of the people said.
Bove left the group alone to discuss how its members wished to proceed, saying he wanted an answer quickly, the people briefed on the matter said. One attorney present told a colleague at Justice that the discussion was “gut-wrenching” and “not anything any of us ever expected to see in America,” the colleague told The Washington Post.
At first, the lawyers agreed they would all resign rather than endorse the dismissal of the Adams corruption case, two people briefed on the session said. But then Sullivan, who is nearing retirement, proposed that he could sign the motion to avoid a mass firing of prosecutors and allow his colleagues time to seek jobs elsewhere, these people said.
The group agreed to accept Sullivan’s offer. But some were upset, believing that their section could still face retaliation and that it would be more principled for everyone to refuse to seek to drop the charges.
Sullivan filed the dismissal motion hours later, joined by Bove and Bacon.
Adams was charged in September with wire fraud, bribery and seeking illegal campaign donations. Prosecutors alleged he had problematic relationships with wealthy foreigners and accepted travel upgrades, luxury hotel rooms and other perks from Turkish businesspeople and at least one government official. He pleaded not guilty.
In her resignation letter, Sassoon described a Jan. 31 meeting with Bove and Adams’s attorneys in which she said the mayor’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo,” insisting that Adams could help with the Justice Department’s immigration priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.
“Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case,” Sassoon wrote.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for the mayor, called the accusation “a total lie.” In a statement released Friday, Adams said he was ready to put the case behind him.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers,” the statement read. “I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”
Adams made two major immigration-related announcements this week, expanding efforts to target gang activity. He appeared on Fox News with Trump border czar Tom Homan, who joked that he would come after Adams if the mayor didn’t keep his promises.
Disputes over legal cases between Justice Department headquarters and U.S. attorney’s offices across the country are not new — especially with the Southern District, known for an independent streak that has earned it the nickname “the Sovereign District of New York.”
During Trump’s first term, his administration also tangled with the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman had prosecuted members of Trump’s inner circle during his years leading the Southern District before Attorney General William P. Barr ousted him in 2020.
Berman initially resisted Barr’s efforts to force him out, and the attorney general fired him. Berman later wrote in a book that Justice Department officials during Trump’s first term had pushed him to take politically motivated actions.
But legal experts called the tenor and tone of the conflict over the Adams case remarkable.
“What’s different about this is the grounds for dismissing the case,” said Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor and former prosecutor with the public integrity unit, pointing to the explicitly political reasons Bove cited for dropping the charges in his memo this week.
Butler said that in prior conflicts within the department, including debates over public corruption cases, “there often are tough issues on both sides. There are legitimate disagreements. And what’s different here is, it seems all about politics.”
Berman and other former U.S. attorneys issued a statement in support of Sassoon on Friday, saying that “her commitment to integrity and the rule of law reflects the finest traditions of the Southern District United States Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice.”
The statement said Bove’s warning that he would investigate Sassoon and other career prosecutors who refused to ask for the case to be dismissed “should concern everyone committed to the pursuit of justice without fear or favor.”
Jacobs reported from New York. Aaron C. Davis, Spencer S. Hsu, Alice Crites, Salvador Rizzo and Perry Stein contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/14/justice-prosecutors-resignation-trump-eric-adams-corruption/
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