Last year, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York brought corruption charges against Eric Adams, the Democrat mayor of New York. Adams pleaded not guilty and has maintained his innocence.
Earlier this week, Danielle Sassoon resigned from her office, writing in a letter to Attorney General Pamela Bondi that she was directed to dismiss those charges, apparently suggesting that the directive from Acting Deputy AG Emil Bove was due to a quid pro quo deal arranged between Adams's team and the Department of Justice.
The evidence in the case supported the indictment, she wrote, and there was no evidence of political retribution in the bringing of charges against Adams, a claim Bove apparently made in directing Sassoon to withdraw the charges.
"I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams's counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal," she wrote in the letter.
Bove, rather than Bondi, responded to Sassoon's letter on Thursday, accepting her resignation and announcing that assistant U.S. attorneys on the case would be placed on leave and investigated for also not complying with the directive to withdraw the charges.
The letter also said that the Department of Justice would take over the prosecution from the Southern District — leading to several other prosecutors within the DOJ's public integrity unit to also resign.
"Your oath to uphold the Constitution does not permit you to substitute your policy judgement for that of the President or senior leadership of the Justice Department," the letter said.
The situation seemed to be in limbo for a few hours through Thursday night and Friday morning. On Friday, Hagan Scotten, one of the assistant U.S. attorneys placed on leave, announced his own resignation in a letter to Bove. In it, he said he agreed with Sassoon's assessment of the case.
"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," his letter said.
Shortly after that, the new acting U.S. Attorney for the district, Matthew Podolsky, unveiled bribery charges against an attorney on Friday.
Finally, late on Friday, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the charges, signed by Bove, longtime corruption prosecutor Edward Sullivan and Supervisory Official Antoinette Bacon.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, Derek Wikstrom and Scotten filed to withdraw from the case.
Jay Clayton, who ran the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission during Trump's first term, is the nominee to become the next U.S. Attorney for SDNY. This is Trump's second attempt at placing Clayton atop the district, after briefly naming Clayton to succeed former U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in 2020. That episode saw Berman step down, but Clayton remained at the SEC until he left public office in December.
The ball is now in Judge Dale Ho's court. | 