Trump DOJ forces a Bloody Thursday to save Eric Adams’s bacon
Danielle Sassoon, the Trump-appointed acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has resigned rather than obey a Justice Department order that she seek dismissal of the corruption indictment of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Had Sassoon agreed to go along with dismissal of the charges, Adams could have argued he was innocent all along, and Trump would have had some cover for the appearance of political interference in a criminal prosecution. But it was not to be.
Trump said in December that he was considering a pardon for Adams, but no need — the case is now dead, even though, as recently as Jan. 6, prosecutors had indicated that their investigation remained active, writing in court papers that they continued to “uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams.” Adams’s trial had been set for April 21.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who carries water for the newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi, was quick to accept Sassoon’s resignation. He sent her a vituperative and self-serving eight-page letter, pious in tone but pernicious in impact, to tell her why. The letter read like a defendant’s brief alleging prosecutorial misconduct.
Sassoon’s ouster was accompanied by resignations of five senior-level Justice Department officials overseeing the Public Integrity Unit, as well as expected resignations by at least two members of Sassoon’s staff who have been on the Adams case. One of them, lead prosecutor Hagan Scotten, quit, writing that only a “fool” or a “coward” would drop the case. Bove had placed the pair on administrative leave in a purge smacking of President Richard Nixon’s infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.”
Ever since Emory Buckner, the U.S. Attorney during the heart of the Prohibition Era, decided to hire his assistants based on merit, the Southern District office had won the respect of lawyers and judges throughout the country for its excellence and independence from political considerations. When I applied to become an assistant U.S. attorney, no one asked me my political affiliation.
SDNY culture was always about the facts and the law. It has been so pristine that some wags have called it the “sovereign district of New York.” The culture of independence especially means independence from the politically turbocharged Washington-based Justice Department to which it reports.
The independence of the prosecutor from political considerations has forever been at the forefront of the job. When Mary Jo White became U.S. Attorney in 1993, Chief Judge J. Edward Lumbard of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, himself a former U.S. Attorney, told her, “Be prepared to resign on principle two or three times.” White later admitted that she had threatened to quit three times during her tenure.
Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, later a Supreme Court Justice, laid the foundation in a speech in 1940 on the role of the prosecutor: “Your responsibility in your several districts for law enforcement and for its methods cannot be wholly surrendered to Washington, and ought not to be assumed by a centralized Department of Justice. It is an unusual and rare instance in which the local District Attorney should be superseded in the handling of litigation, except where he requests help of Washington. It is also clear that with his knowledge of local sentiment and opinion, his contact with and intimate knowledge of the views of the court, and his acquaintance with the feelings of the group from which jurors are drawn, it is an unusual case in which his judgment should be overruled.”
The decision by Main Justice to dismiss the case, coming from Bove — an SDNY alumnus who just happened to be one of Trump’s defense attorneys in the Stormy Daniels case — had nothing to do with the facts or the law, but was based wholly on political considerations. In accepting Sassoon’s resignation, Bove argued that the “pending prosecution had unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime,” two of Trump’s major political planks.
Bove contends that Adams cannot be prosecuted because it inhibits his cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown, arguing that this “situation is unacceptable” since it “directly endangers the lives of millions of New Yorkers.” Bove pointed to “major public safety risks.”
Public safety risks? Bove apparently forgot that the very crime Adams is charged with — accepting bribes from the Turkish government to pressure the Fire Department to sign off on the opening of a new Turkish consular building despite defects in its fire safety system, involved “major public safety risks.”
It is one thing for the Supreme Court to place a former president above the law; it is quite another to place a municipal mayor above the law because prosecution may inhibit him from performing his duties while awaiting trial. This has never been the case in American history. When Adams was indicted last September, he assured the public, “My day will not change, I will continue to do the job for 8.3 million New Yorkers that I was elected to do.”
Where is it going to end? This tension is part of every corruption case involving a public official. Can a city dogcatcher avoid a criminal prosecution because the overhang of the trial inhibits him from catching wild mutts? On Bove’s logic, he certainly can.
Bove apparently couldn’t find any prosecutor in New York willing to stand before a judge and dismiss the case. So he pressured a Justice Department lawyer in the Public Integrity Section named Ed Sullivan into making the required motion under Rule 48 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. Under that rule, leave of court is required, and the court may deny the motion, but then there would be no one to prosecute the case. This is called a “ghost prosecution.” The case would just disappear, its records sent to the shredder.
Bove’s letter accused Sassoon and her office of “weaponization,” “politicization,” “insubordination and apparent misconduct.” He claimed that the Adams investigation “accelerated” after the mayor criticized former President Joe Biden’s failed immigration policies.
What the letter overlooks is the interests of the community in the Adams prosecution. Adams’s motive for the alleged crime could only be venality and greed. When a public official violates his public trust, his actions only give comfort to the cynic.
A civilized society is strong only as long as its laws are administered honestly, fairly and impartially by those sworn to do so. And no one is under a weightier duty of scrupulous adherence to the rule of law than the Justice Department itself.
James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.
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