Senior US officials quit over order to drop New York mayor’s graft case

Manhattan’s chief federal prosecutor and senior Justice Department officials in Washington resigned rather than carry out an order to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, defying the wishes of President Donald Trump.

Interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon stepped down Thursday, a day after she wrote Attorney General Pam Bondi an eight-page letter defending her office’s handling of the Adam’s case and saying she saw no good-faith reason to drop the case. Sassoon was instructed to do so Monday by Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who said the case was politically motivated and was hindering Adams’ cooperation with Trump’s immigration enforcement priorities.

“I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially, and that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those who appointed me,” Sassoon wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

Bove accepted Sassoon’s resignation in his own letter Thursday, accusing her of insubordination and saying that the case was being reassigned to the Justice Department. Leaders in Washington in charge of corruption investigations, including John Keller, who was acting chief of the public integrity section, and Kevin Driscoll who was the criminal division’s deputy assistant attorney general, also resigned after being asked to take over the case, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some of their top deputies were leaving as well, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the personnel moves. It wasn’t immediately clear who would be leading the unit. In New York, Assistant US Attorney Matthew Podolsky was put in charge on an acting basis, a spokesman for the office said.

The tumultuous day underscores how the Trump administration’s new priorities continued to cause upheaval across the Justice Department, rattling the ranks of veteran law enforcement officials.

Sassoon, Keller and Driscoll all declined to comment on Thursday. A Justice Department spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Monday’s directive prompted a standoff between the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York and Trump’s newly appointed Justice Department leadership over the independence of the nation’s most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office. Assistant US attorneys in the office, which has been called the “Sovereign District” due to its tradition of autonomy from Washington, typically handle the country’s highest-profile white-collar crime and political corruption cases.

Bove made clear in his letter that the Southern District was “not exempted” from a memo threatening discipline or termination to federal prosecutors who refused to advance the administration’s agenda. The two assistant US attorneys directly handling the Adams case were being put on administrative leave, according to Bove’s letter, which was obtained by Bloomberg News.

The departures also raise doubts about whether the Adams prosecution can be quickly put aside. Sassoon said in her letter that she thought it was likely that US District Judge Dale Ho, who’s been presiding over the case, would reject as improper a prosecution motion to dismiss the case or at least insist on a lengthy and rigorous inquiry that would be “detrimental to the Department’s reputation, regardless of outcome.”

Adams, 64, was charged in September with accepting illegal campaign donations and taking luxury travel upgrades in exchange for political favours to the Turkish government. The mayor, a Democrat, pleaded not guilty and has argued that he was targeted due to his criticisms of then-President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

In recent months, Adams had been courting Trump, meeting with the president at his Mar-a-Lago compound, and attending his inauguration. Trump in turn has endorsed Adam’s claims of being politically targeted and previously suggested he might pardon Adams.

In his letter, Bove accused Sassoon of inappropriately recommending that the president do exactly that.

“Your suggestion that President Trump should issue a pardon to Mayor Adams reveals that your office’s insubordination is little more than a preference to avoid a duty that you regard as unpleasant and politically inconvenient,” he wrote.

When asked about Sassoon’s resignation and whether he had personally asked the Justice Department to drop the case, Trump said on Thursday “I know nothing about it,” before turning back around and saying “that US attorney was actually fired.”

Sassoon, 38, was elevated to the position of Manhattan’s chief federal prosecutor shortly after Trump’s inauguration. A seasoned assistant US attorney in the office, she also had conservative credentials as a member of the Federalist Society and former clerk to late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. She gained national attention in 2023 for her role in prosecuting FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried. She was expected to hold the position until the new president’s appointee, former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Jay Clayton, was confirmed by the Senate.

Her stance won praise Thursday from a number of former Southern District prosecutors.

“Danielle Sassoon’s decision to resign is historic and reaffirms that SDNY views itself as independent of politics,” said Josh Naftalis, a former Southern District colleague of hers. “She is a Republican but doesn’t want to be in the middle of this and showed that the institution doesn’t want to be pulled into the middle.”

Carrie Cohen, another veteran of the office, agreed. “It sends a very strong message,” she said of Sassoon’s resignation.

But Bove, who is also a former Southern District prosecutor, took a different view.

“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected president and a Senate-confirmed attorney general,” he wrote to Sassoon.