A top prosecutor who brought corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams resigned Friday after being ordered by the Trump Justice Department to drop the case, the latest federal attorney to quit in protest over the extraordinary demand.
Pressure was mounting meanwhile on the Democratic mayor to resign or for New York Governor Kathy Hochul to use her powers to remove him as the leader of the largest city in the United States.
Danielle Sassoon, who was appointed by President Donald Trump to be the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, submitted her resignation to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, three days after being asked to drop the case against Adams.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant US attorney for the Southern District, followed suit on Friday and said in a blistering email to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove that the reasons given for dismissing the indictment of Adams did not stand up to scrutiny.
“No system of 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,” Scotten said.
In asking for the charges to be dropped, Bove, a former personal lawyer to Trump, said the prosecution of Adams was restricting his “ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime.”
Scotten, in his email to Bove, said “our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials.
“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,” he said. “But it was never going to be me.”
Scotten, a decorated US Army veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, was a former clerk to conservative US Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump to the Supreme Court.
Sassoon, a graduate of Yale Law School and a member of the conservative Federalist Society, led the high-profile 2023 prosecution of disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.
In addition to Sassoon and Scotten, several high-ranking members of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, which handles corruption cases, have also resigned this week.
‘Unbelievably unprecedented’
The first sitting New York mayor to be criminally indicted, Adams pleaded not guilty in September to charges of fraud and bribery and has asserted that he was being punished for his criticism of then-president Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
He has rebuffed calls to step down and plans to run for reelection in November.
Trump expressed solidarity with Adams last year, saying he was being prosecuted “for speaking out against open borders.”
Hochul, the New York governor, in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday, denounced the Justice Department’s interference in the Adams case calling it “unbelievably unprecedented.”
“The Bondi Administration in that Department of Justice is already showing they’re corrupt,” she said.
Asked if she would remove Adams as mayor, Hochul said: “The allegations are extremely concerning and serious, but I cannot, as the Governor of this state, have a knee jerk, politically motivated reaction.”
The Justice Department, which Trump has accused of unjustly prosecuting him, has been the target of a sweeping shakeup since the Republican took office and a number of high-ranking officials have been fired, demoted or reassigned.
Among those sacked were members of the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two now-abandoned criminal cases against Trump.
