Something is rotten in the Department of Justice.
Three federal prosecutors told their supervisors they’d rather resign than admit to wrongdoing over their refusal to drop the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “We will not confess wrongdoing where there was none,” Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in an email obtained by the New York Times. The three prosecutors were placed on administrative leave this year after refusing DOJ officials’ order to drop the case against Adams.
All three prosecutors had worked under Democratic and Republican administrations and had done their part to advance the executive branches’ priorities regardless of ideology, they wrote in the email. But the Trump administration had politicized the department to an unprecedented degree. “Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington,” the email read.
The resignation email is the latest episode in a drama that has been playing out at the Justice Department since the start of Trump’s second term. The trouble began in February, when newly-installed DOJ officials ordered prosecutors to drop the federal corruption case against embattled New York City Mayor Eric Adams. A spate of government attorneys issued their resignations, drawing inevitable comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre: the 1973 scandal that roiled the department after its two top officials quit in protest of then-President Richard Nixon’s firing of the prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation.
The ensuing Justice Department drama fits in a series of constant challenges to the rule of law under President Donald Trump. In some ways, it’s a piece of local politics, but it’s also the kind of blatant quid pro quo that’s cropping up all sorts of places, including the tech industry.
The Justice Department’s efforts to protect Adams were a harbinger for the Trump administration’s multi-pronged assault on the rule of law
When looked at through the lens of cronyism, seemingly disparate actions like X’s $10 million settlement with Trump, Mark Zuckerberg and Trump’s relationship improving after Meta changed its content moderation policies, and Trump’s decision to stave off the TikTok ban clearly have a common thread — one that leads easily toward something like the DOJ’s apparently direct exchange of favors. The Justice Department’s efforts to protect Adams were a harbinger for the Trump administration’s multi-pronged assault on the rule of law.
Prosecutors indicted Adams last September on charges including fraud, bribery, and soliciting donations from foreign nationals. Shortly after Trump was sworn into office, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to move to dismiss the case. (In a memo requesting the case be dismissed, Bove wrote that the case “has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration violent crime.”)
After initially agreeing to cancel the trial until mid-March and appointing outside counsel to advise on next steps, judge Dale Ho dismissed the charges against Adams in early April. But in his order, Ho rebuked the Trump administration. “Everything here smacks of a bargain: Dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions,” Ho wrote. Still, the court “cannot force the Department of Justice to prosecute a defendant.”
Ho dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning Adams can’t be tried for the same charges again. Even for Adams’ most adamant haters, the mayor’s permanent escape from these corruption charges might be better than the alternative. The DOJ had asked the court to dismiss Adams’ charges without prejudice, which would have allowed for it to be reopened at any time — something critics pointed out would operate as leverage to ensure that Adams complied with Trump’s immigration policies.
Indeed, the cooperation of New York’s mayor could help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) get around the city’s sanctuary law, which, since 2014, has limited the degree to which the New York Police Department can cooperate with ICE. And the greatest threat to Adams’ position as mayor — as well as the greatest threat to him personally — was the prosecution against him for alleged bribery.
But for the Trump administration to drop those charges so that Adams can abet mass deportation policies in contravention of the city’s own sanctuary policy looks an awful like tit for tat. In fact, the prosecutors handling the Adams case have called this a clear example of quid pro quo.
Danielle Sassoon, the former interim US attorney for the Southern District of New York, levied that accusation in a resignation letter that leaked to the New York Times. When Sassoon stepped down, it kicked off a whole string of resignations at the DOJ.
These attorneys’ resignations aren’t exactly partisan. Some of the prosecutors who recently left the department have strong conservative bona fides. “Some will view the mistake you are committing here in light of their generally negative views of the new administration,” Hagan Scotten, one of the since-departed prosecutors wrote in his resignation letter to Bove. “I do not share those views.” Scotten previously clerked for both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sassoon, who had been appointed to the position by Trump in January, is a Federalist Society member who had previously clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia
Meanwhile, Sassoon, who had been appointed to the position by Trump in January, is a Federalist Society member who had previously clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia. She is, in other words, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. After receiving Bove’s memo, Sassoon wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to reconsider dropping the Adams case. Her letter was a point-by-point refutation of Bove’s rationale for dismissing the case. “It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with a dismissal of a criminal indictment,” Sassoon wrote. “Nor will a court find that such an improper exchange is consistent with the public interest.”
Sassoon recounted a recent meeting with Bove and Adams’ legal team, during which she claims the mayor’s attorneys said he’d be able to help Trump with immigration enforcement priorities if the case against him was dismissed. According to Sassoon, Bove “admonished” a member of her staff for taking notes during the meeting and had someone confiscate them after the fact. Given these details, Sassoon said she’d have no choice but to resign unless the attorney general reversed course. Ultimately, Bove accepted Sassoon’s resignation with an eight-page letter of his own, in which he basically accused her of insubordination. Three other attorneys reportedly quit the same day.
Scotten, the chief prosecutor on the case, resigned days later. “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” Scotten wrote in his resignation letter to Bove. “But it was never going to be me.”
That morning, Bove transferred the cases to the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, telling attorneys there he needed two people to sign off on a motion asking the court to dismiss the case against Adams — and that anyone who wasn’t willing to do so was risking their job — according to reporting from The Washington Post. The attorneys initially agreed to resign in protest, two people with knowledge of the meeting told the Post. To stave off a mass resignation, Edward Sullivan, a corruption prosecutor who is nearing retirement, reportedly offered to put his name on the motion so his colleagues would have time to find work elsewhere. Sullivan filed the dismissal motion a few hours later.
While this drama played out behind the scenes, Adams was boasting of his cooperation with the Trump administration
While this drama played out behind the scenes, Adams was boasting of his cooperation with the Trump administration. “Let’s be clear — I’m not standing in the way. I’m collaborating against so many others who don’t want to collaborate,” Adams said during a February appearance on Fox & Friends, alongside “border czar” Tom Homan. “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch,” Homan added. “I’ll be up his butt, saying ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” That agreement, which Adams announced on February 13, would grant ICE agents access to Rikers Island, the notorious New York City jail. ICE closed its offices in the jail complex in 2015, and since then, the NYPD has only honored ICE “detainer” requests — under which it holds people in local jails until ICE can pick them up — that were accompanied by a warrant signed by a federal judge.
Instead of assuaging criticisms of quid pro quo, the Fox & Friends appearance led to more accusations of impropriety. The Atlantic described the interview as a “hostage video,” while one member of Congress called it “outright extortion.” In a subsequent interview on CNN, Homan called the quid pro quo allegations “ridiculous.” Meanwhile, Adams described himself as the victim of a smear campaign. “People are dancing on my grave,” he told congregants at a Queens church on February 16 before comparing himself to Lazarus, the biblical figure who was resurrected by Jesus four days after his death.
Adams’ saviors are more terrestrial than divine. Alina Habba, Trump’s lead attorney, defended Adams against accusations that he was a “political pawn” of the Trump administration. “This man was prosecuted because he was anti-sanctuary city policies,” Habba said during a February Fox & Friends interview, echoing a claim Adams and his attorneys made repeatedly in the months since his indictment.
Adams was indicted last September. In January, federal prosecutors said the FBI had discovered “additional criminal conduct,” and per Sassoon’s letter, the DOJ was preparing to charge him with destroying evidence, ordering others to do so, and providing false information to the FBI. (After the FBI issued a search warrant for Adams’ devices in November 2023, he told investigators that he forgot the password for his personal device; as of last November, the FBI still wasn’t able to break into Adams’ phone, according to a motion Scotten filed at the time. It’s unclear whether this is the false information Sassoon was referring to.)
Adams claimed the prosecution was politically motivated, accusing former President Joe Biden’s administration of targeting him due to his opposition to Biden’s immigration policies. (His attorneys have also since alleged that the leak of Sassoon’s resignation letter was prosecutorial misconduct.) When Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent a bus full of asylum seekers to New York City in 2022, Adams personally welcomed them at the Port Authority bus terminal. But as the months passed and more migrants arrived in the city, Adams grew increasingly critical of Biden’s border policies, at one point claiming the influx would “destroy New York City.” Adams took an even harsher stance on immigration after Trump’s victory, suggesting that any migrants charged with crimes don’t have rights under the Constitution. When the mayor declared his eagerness to work with Trump on immigration enforcement, some political operatives began wondering whether Adams was hoping to be pardoned by the incoming president.
It turns out a pardon wasn’t necessary after all. And rather than going after allegedly corrupt public officials, Trump’s DOJ is retaliating against its own employees.
