NEW YORK – The resignations came hard and fast, with some describing it as a “bloodletting” or “Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
Last Monday, Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Emil Bove, ordered that all charges against Adams be dismissed “without prejudice,” leaving a loophole for their resuscitation if Adams did not live up to his end of the bargain to act as Trump’s policy enforcer in New York. Mayor Adams himself released a video statement later that day saying that “we can put this cruel episode behind us.”
Yet, days later, no one working in the Southern District of New York or at the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Unit was willing to actually follow Bove’s memo and move to dismiss the charges.
By Friday, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Danielle Sassoon, her Assistant Attorney, Hagan Scotten, and five other Justice Department officials all turned in their resignations rather than follow the diktats of the new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and move to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
“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 in her resignation letter. “Moreover, dismissing the case will amplify, rather than abate, concerns about weaponization of the Department.”
Scotten’s resignation letter was shorter, but no less scathing in its moral indictment. “I can even understand how [Trump,] whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal,” the twice-awarded Bronze Star Army veteran wrote. “But 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.”
“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. But it was never going to be me.”
Neither Sassoon nor Scotten are the Trump administration’s ideal to object to dismissing the charges against Adams. Both are registered Republican. Sassoon, a member of the ultra-right Federalist Society and former clerk for ultra-right Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, was herself appointed by Trump just last month. Scotten, who commanded Army troops across three tours in Iraq, clerked for both future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
Their strongly worded resignations cast an even more sickly pall on the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss charges against Eric Adams in exchange for his abetting Trump’s policies in the most diverse and populous city in the United States. In his reply to Sassoon’s resignation letter, Bove promised that all those who defied his orders would be subject to investigation themselves.
Bove and Bondi then turned their efforts to convincing members of the DoJ Public Integrity Unit to sign off on dropping the charges against Adams. Five officials, including the acting head of the Criminal Division and acting head of the Criminal Division’s Public Integrity Unit, immediately resigned.
The next day, former U.S. Attorney General Barbara McQuade claimed that all two dozen Public Integrity Section lawyers were gathered in a conference room and told that if none of them would be willing, within the hour, to sign off on the paperwork to seek dismissal of Mayor Adams charges, all of them would be fired.
After a tense negotiation, Edward Sullivan, an elder prosecutor in the department, decided to sign, ostensibly to save the others, who would be forced to resign and also put their bar licenses at risk by doing so, as the ethical ramifications of the dismissal were already made so well known by their colleagues who had already resigned.
Despite the motion being officially filed with the courts, the Judge involved, the Hon. Dale Ho, can still step into the breach and call for greater ethical scrutiny. Experts predict that the prosecutors who signed their name to the motion to dismiss will be brought before the judge and compelled to explain their sudden change of heart regarding Eric Adams. Even before New York City voters may choose another politician to represent them this November, Monday’s resignation of four deputy mayors pushed Governor Kathy Hochul to meet with top city officials on Tuesday to explore the process of removing Adams from office via an Inability Committee.
While state and local governments scramble to find solutions to the chaos, not much else at the federal level stands between Trump’s Department of Justice and its intention to become a score-settler for the president. MAGA holds the reigns of the presidency, judiciary, and legislative branches of government. “In any other world, the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Judiciary Committee would be immediately plunging into action,” an anonymous Department of Justice source told Politico. Indeed, putting the entire justice system’s reputation on the line to hold charges over a mayor whose elected term is up in less than a year seems a hefty price to pay – unless the open, flagrant disregard of the rule of law is entirely the point.
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