Federal prosecutors in Washington formally asked a judge on Friday to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City after the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan resigned in the face of an order to carry out the request.
The prosecutors, Emil Bove III, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette T. Bacon, filed the request with Judge Dale E. Ho, who is overseeing the mayor’s case in Manhattan federal court, where Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts that included bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Mr. Adams had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April.
Mr. Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, “concluded that dismissal is necessary because of appearances of impropriety and risks of interference with the 2025 elections in New York City,” the prosecutors said in a four-page motion to Judge Ho.
The filing said that Mr. Bove had also concluded that continuing the proceedings against the mayor would interfere with his “ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
Ordinarily it is the responsibility of the local U.S. attorney whose office prosecutes a case to move for its dismissal. But in Mr. Adams’s case, that prosecutor, Danielle R. Sassoon, 38, quit Thursday. Her stunning decision to resign from her position as top prosecutor of the Southern District of New York came after she told the attorney general that she would not obey an order that had no “valid basis.”
The original order to drop the charges against Mr. Adams was sent Monday to Ms. Sassoon by Mr. Bove. Mr. Bove said that the request was not based on the strength of the evidence in the case or any legal theories, but rather on the idea that the charges would interfere with Mr. Adams’s ability to assist President Trump in his plan for mass deportations.
In a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, Ms. Sassoon characterized the order as a quid pro quo — dropping the charges in exchange for the mayor’s support of Mr. Trump’s political program.
“I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations,” Ms. Sassoon wrote.
Mr. Bove, responding on Thursday, told Ms. Sassoon in his own letter that she was “simply incorrect to contend that there is no ‘valid’ basis to seek dismissal” of the Adams case.
“The contention is a dereliction of your duty to advocate zealously on behalf of the United States,” Mr. Bove wrote.
In his directive to Ms. Sassoon on Monday, Mr. Bove noted that he had told the mayor’s lawyers that the government was not offering “to exchange dismissal of a criminal case for Adams’s assistance on immigration enforcement.” But on Thursday, hours after Ms. Sassoon quit, the mayor said he would allow federal immigration authorities to operate within the Rikers Island jail complex.
Under the law, judges may question a prosecutor’s decision to seek a dismissal of charges, but they almost always grant such requests.
Ms. Sassoon, 38, said in court papers last month that there was “concrete evidence” of crimes by Mr. Adams, and that his claims that his prosecution was politically motivated were meant to divert attention “from the evidence of his guilt.”
For days, Manhattan prosecutors had been watching to see how Ms. Sassoon would handle the Justice Department’s directive to drop the charges; she and other top prosecutors had traveled to Washington recently to meet with department officials to discuss the issue in person.
The Trump administration last month elevated Ms. Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor, to head the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York while President Trump’s choice for the post, Jay Clayton, awaited Senate confirmation.
In Mr. Bove’s letter accepting her resignation, he blasted her handling of the case and decision to disobey his order.
He told her the prosecutors who had worked on the case against Mr. Adams were being placed on administrative leave because they, too, were unwilling to obey his order and said they and Ms. Sassoon would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm.
Matthew Podolsky, who had been Ms. Sassoon’s deputy, is now the acting U.S. attorney, a spokesman for the office said Thursday evening.
The indictment against Mr. Adams was announced in September by a former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, who led the office during the Biden administration. Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has claimed that he was targeted because of his criticism of the administration over the migrant crisis — an assertion the Southern District has rebutted, noting that the investigation began well before the mayor made those comments.
Mr. Adams has praised parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, visited him near his Mar-a-Lago compound and attended his inauguration a few days later. The two men did not discuss a pardon, but Mr. Trump spoke about a “weaponized” Justice Department, The New York Times reported.
Mr. Trump had criticized Mr. Adams’s prosecution, saying the mayor had been “treated pretty unfairly,” and had floated the possibility of a pardon.
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