In September 2024 the current mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, was indicted by a Grand Jury on five charges of bribery and fraud (New York has a history of choosing mayors unwisely). The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has been actively prosecuting the charges and it was expected to go to trial in April. Evidence in the case is said to be very clear and strong including for accepting gifts from foreign government officials of over $100,000. Adams has pled not guilty and denies any wrongdoing.
In early February Emil Bove III, the Acting Deputy
Attorney General appointed by President Trump, send a memorandum to the SDNY attorney’s
office demanding the charges be dropped. There was no problem, the memo said,
with the case itself. The reason given for dismissal is that the indictment was
preventing Adams from fully cooperating with the Trump administration’s activities
to “address illegal immigration and violent crime” in the city. This is widely understood
to mean Trump’s roundup of undocumented immigrants.
The memorandum from Bove directed the Interim U.S. Attorney
for SDNY Danielle Sassoon to “dismiss the indictment against Mayor Eric Adams
without prejudice…” This wording means that the case could be brought up again
should the AG office choose to, thus creating both a carrot and a stick to
enforce Adams’ cooperation.
In Sassoon's resignation letter she revealed that the lawyers for Eric Adams had "repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Depeartment's enforcement priorities if only the indictment were dismissed."
When asked on Friday if he had made a deal to do
something in exchange for the case being dismissed, Adams emphatically denied
it. “The idea that there was a quid pro
quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us.”
But then Friday morning Tom Homan, Acting Director of U.S. Immigrations, said in
a Fox News interview about Adams “If he
doesn’t come through I’ll be back in New York City … in his office … saying “Where
the hell is the agreement we came to?” Oops!
Bove, who was one of Trump’s defense lawyers in the
2024 New York State criminal trial, also suggested that the indictment against Adams
was politically motivated. This is a blatant lie as the evidence for the case
is very clear. The commissioner of NYC’s Department of Investigation said of
the case against Mayor Adams that they “conducted its work apolitically, guided
solely by the facts and the law.” Eric Adams, by the way, is a Democrat.
So far seven Justice Department prosecutors in New
York and Washington have resigned rather than take Bove’s move for dismissal to
the judge. The first was Danielle Sassoon who resigned on Wednesday (February
12) in a well-written 8 page letter explaining the illegalities of the move.
You can read her letter here.
In it she writes “Because
the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has
committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a
dismissal driven by improper considerations”. She ends the letter “In the event you are unwilling to meet or to
reconsider the directive in light of the problems raised by Mr. Bove’s memo, I
am prepared to offer my resignation.”
Bove replied, accepting her resignation in his own 8
page letter. In it he criticized Sassoon for insubordination, writing “In no valid sense do you uphold the
Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly
elected President…” This suggests that Bove, and Pam Bondi as well, believe
that the president’s power supersedes that of the courts and the Constitution. [This
reminds me of the quote attributed to France’s King Louis XIV “L’Etat, c’est moi”]
Bove also placed two of the attorneys under Sassoon, Hagan
Scotten and Derek Wikstrom, on administrative leave.
Bove then turned to the Public Integrity Section of
the Department of Justice in Washington to request the dismissal. Five more
prosecutors there resigned rather than follow the orders for dismissal, leaving
the public integrity section without leadership.
Then on Friday Hagan Scotten resigned, writing a
scathing letter rebuking Bove. He wrote that “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot
of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to
induce an elected official to support its policy objectives … 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.” He
ended with “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.”
Eventually Bove did find a prosecutor willing to sign
the case for dismissal. He reputedly locked all the Public Integrity Section
lawyers in a room and instructed them to determine which one would file the
request or they would all be fired. After an hour-long deliberation in which
they considered all resigning, one prosecutor who was near retirement, Edward
Sullivan, agreed to do it to save the others’ jobs.
Now it is up to the U.S. district judge, Dale Ho, who
was appointed by President Biden in 2023, to make the decision. It is almost
unheard of for a judge not to accept a request for dismissal from the
prosecutors, but this is an exceptional case. Ho could decide that the
government’s justification for dismissal is inadequate, or that it is
politically motivated and insults the grand jury who indicted him. He could
conduct a thorough court inquiry into the dismissal which would reveal Bove’s
actions for what they are. In any case, should Judge Ho decline to accept the
dismissal, it will undoubtedly be appealed.
Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, by the way, are
both solid conservatives. Sassoon clerked under Antonin Scalia and is a member
of the Federalist Society. Scotten clerked for both John Roberts and Brett
Kavanaugh. Their decision to resign shows exceptional character and bravery. I expect they will be vilified and harassed by the
right-wing media and their social media followers, like Liz Cheney and other Republicans
were when they stood up for what is right against Donald Trump and the MAGATs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/13/nyregion/danielle-sassoon-quit-eric-adams.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/13/us/doc-annotation-letter-to-bondi.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/02/14/nyregion/scotten-letter.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/nyregion/adams-charges-judge.html
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/doj-dismisses-adams-corruption-charges/63802736
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-14-2025
https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-21525-ca-or-and-wa
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