Senate Democrats on Tuesday asked a New York committee that disciplines lawyers to investigate whether the acting deputy attorney general violated rules of professional conduct by demanding that prosecutors abandon a corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.
The request, filed by the 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the New York group to determine whether the official, Emil Bove III, “should be subject to disciplinary action.”
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New York’s attorney grievance committees allow lawyers to police their own. The committees, which work in private, can recommend disciplinary measures to an appeals court, including disbarment in extraordinary cases. The process often moves slowly.
Last month, Mr. Bove, a former criminal defense lawyer for President Trump, ordered Manhattan prosecutors to abandon their case against Mr. Adams. The order caused upheaval within the Department of Justice, leading to the resignation of at least eight prosecutors, including the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon.
Before her resignation, Ms. Sassoon sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing Mr. Adams’s defense team of arranging a quid pro quo at a meeting with department officials. She said that the defense lawyers had effectively signaled that the mayor would cooperate with Mr. Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda in exchange for the dismissal of the five charges against him.
She also said that Mr. Bove had scolded a member of her team who took notes on the meeting, and had asked that the notes be collected once the meeting ended.
Mr. Bove has denied that any quid pro quo was arranged, as has a lawyer for Mr. Adams, Alex Spiro. Mr. Adams has said, under oath, that every part of his agreement with department officials has been disclosed.
In his own letter, Mr. Bove accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation, writing, “Your oath to uphold the Constitution does not permit you to substitute your policy judgment for that of the president.” Eventually, he signed his own name to a motion requesting that a judge dismiss the case. The judge, Dale E. Ho, has yet to make a decision.
The Democratic senators cited Ms. Sassoon’s letter as they detailed their concerns to an attorney grievance committee in Manhattan, writing that Mr. Bove had “explicitly premised the dismissal of charges against Mayor Eric L. Adams upon the extraction of a political favor.”
They said that Mr. Bove’s direction about the meeting notes clearly indicated an “intent to hide or destroy evidence that the department was extracting a political favor from Mayor Adams.”
The senators also noted that prosecutors have asked that the case be dismissed without prejudice, meaning that they could bring charges anew, calling the arrangement “inherently coercive.”
Mr. Bove, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan, has become the public face of Mr. Trump’s tightening grip on the Department of Justice, and his actions in the Adams case have invited significant scrutiny. The Manhattan grievance committee has received several requests to investigate him. One came from Campaign for Accountability, an advocacy group, and another from Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a Democratic state senator.
And this week, the top two Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee signaled that they have begun an investigation into the push to drop the charges against Mr. Adams.
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