Every occupying force knows the tactic: If you want to cow a large population, pick one of its most respected citizens and demand he debase himself and pledge fealty. If he refuses, execute him and move on to the next one. This is how the Trump Justice Department thinks it will bring U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country under its control, starting last week with the Southern District of New York. Firing or demanding the resignation of a previous administration’s top prosecutors has become standard. After all, elections matter, and a new president should be free to set new priorities.
But the Trump Justice Department’s twisted loyalty game is something new, dangerous and self-defeating. And this round probably won’t be the last.
In instructing the Southern District to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, found a useful loyalty test. In his letter to Danielle Sassoon, the interim Southern District U.S. attorney, Mr. Bove gave two transparently inappropriate reasons: a baseless claim that the prosecution was politicized, which her powerful resignation letter demolished, and a barely concealed suggestion that a dismissal would provide leverage over Mr. Adams and ensure his cooperation in the administration’s efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. As Hagan Scotten, who led the Adams prosecution and has also resigned, nicely put it, “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.”
When Ms. Sassoon, to her considerable credit, refused to debase herself and her office by proceeding on these rationales, Mr. Bove moved on to lawyers in Washington. Each resigned, until finally he found officials who would join him in signing.
I don’t know why the Southern District was the first office in Mr. Bove’s cross hairs. Perhaps Mr. Adams’s lawyers, with connections to President Trump and Elon Musk, were first in a line of cronies seeking sweet deals for their clients. Perhaps Mr. Adams’s pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago gave his case priority. Perhaps Mr. Bove has demanded similar demonstrations of loyalty from other offices, which quietly caved. Or perhaps Mr. Bove, an alumnus of the Southern District, thought its reputation for independence required it to be the first brought to heel.
At the nation’s founding, the Southern District quickly assumed importance because the New York Customs House was the source of a large chunk of the government’s revenue. Its present culture was established when President Theodore Roosevelt recruited an elite New York lawyer, Henry Stimson, later a secretary of war and secretary of state, to go after abusive monopolies. Merit, not the usual patronage concerns, drove Mr. Stimson’s recruitment of young lawyers, including Felix Frankfurter and Emory Buckner, who would become an esteemed leader of the office.
Its separation from Washington and local politics was fostered by a series of liberal Republican U.S. attorneys who had little use for Prohibition and little patience with the sordid local Democratic machine. Fed by and litigating against elite New York firms, the office became embedded in the city’s legal culture. In time, New York’s status as a financial center, combined with a growing federal interest in pursuing white-collar crime, ensured that the Southern District would attract extraordinarily talented young lawyers interested both in public service and in easy employability thereafter.
These forces created a virtuous cycle that promoted the Southern District’s independence. Federal judges took pride in its consequential prosecutions and looked askance when Washington dispatched lawyers to represent the government. New York law firms took pride (and profits) when they warned clients that a Southern District prosecution should not be taken lightly. Exceptional young lawyers could seek jobs there, secure that if they perceived a challenge to their integrity or decency, they could flee to a law firm and increase their salaries.
The Southern District’s reputation for independence lasted because it served the interests of those in Washington. This isn’t some rebel alliance. Rather, administrations of both parties have seen the value in having a cadre of talented young lawyers ready to take on conspicuous targets such as terrorists, Mafia families, insider-trading rings and corrupt officials. Moreover, the independence has always been relative. Presidential priorities have always mattered. Cases get appealed up the chain. As Washington over the years sought more detail about the office’s operation and cases, its oversight has increased, as have its interventions. It largely respected the office’s integrity. Until now.
The Trump administration had other ways to make good on its corrupt bargain. Mr. Trump himself could have ordered the dismissal motion. Sure, such an intervention would be inadvisable, as Attorney General William Wirt warned President James Monroe in 1821, because “it is an impolitic relaxation of the laws and holds out an encouragement to sport and trifle with them.” But Mr. Trump has trifled before. Alternatively, Mr. Bove could have signed the motion, as he ended up doing. He clearly thought it important the filing come from New York.
I doubt this was to save travel expenses. Rather, Mr. Bove wanted to put the reputation and credibility of the Southern District behind the administration’s naked exercise of power and disregard for the rule of law. Since long before the creation of the Justice Department in 1870, U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country have served presidential purposes by mediating between Washington and the districts. Deeply embedded locally, U.S. attorneys and their assistants have sought to advance presidential and congressional goals before local federal judges and juries.
As Mr. Bove’s letter accepting Ms. Sassoon’s resignation suggests, federal prosecutors can be turned into the president’s sock puppets. Yet it is inconceivable that federal criminal law, given its depth, breadth and severity, would look the same if Congress thought it was simply handing power to a unitary executive. Moreover, Mr. Bove’s vision of prosecutorial fealty relies on an unsustainable bait and switch. Should the public see every federal prosecutor and agent as just a presidential minion, lacking professional judgment, moral compass and respect for law, the responses of judges, juries and witnesses will be simply a function of their own political preferences.
Ms. Sassoon and other Justice Department officials refused to be Mr. Bove’s sock puppets. When Judge Dale E. Ho considers whether to allow the dismissal of the charges against the mayor, Mr. Bove will have to defend his decision. Judge Ho has limited discretion and may well end up accepting the motion. But Mr. Bove, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Mr. Trump now have to own their deal. If they are proud of it, their effort to hide their involvement is curious indeed.
I doubt this Justice Department’s readiness to turn a prosecution into political leverage will stop with the Adams case. It will be interesting to see what happens in the fraud prosecution of Gautam Adani, a close ally of President Narendra Modi of India, in the Eastern District of New York, now that Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi have met. I fear the administration’s demand for absolute fealty will destroy the culture and morale of offices filled with people drawn to the job by a hatred of bullies and a desire to at least try to do the right thing, without fear or favor. I also see the administration’s intense focus on immigration cases, to the exclusion of corruption and white-collar cases of all sorts, turning the department into a protector of the privileged and scourge of the unfortunate.
Perhaps Mr. Bove and others wouldn’t mind filling federal prosecutors’ offices with sock puppets and ideologues. In the long run, the plan is probably self-defeating. All federal prosecutors operate within a legal ecosystem that demands they act with integrity and exercise independent legal judgments. Diktats from Washington can override these constraints. The responses of judges, juries and witnesses may be harder to control.
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