During his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing to become the No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Todd Blanche suggested that he had no direct knowledge of the decision to abandon a criminal corruption case against the mayor of New York City.
But in a draft letter unsealed on Tuesday, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan wrote that a top department official, Emil Bove III, had suggested otherwise before ordering her to seek the case’s dismissal.
The U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, wrote that when she suggested that department officials await Mr. Blanche’s Senate confirmation so he could play a role in the decision, Mr. Bove informed her that Mr. Blanche was on the “same page,” and that there was “no need to wait.” The draft was written by Ms. Sassoon earlier this year, as she fought for the case’s survival.
The draft letter was among a cache of communications, including emails and texts, submitted under seal to a judge, Dale E. Ho, by Mr. Bove and Mr. Blanche, after Mr. Blanche’s confirmation. The communications were attached to a motion supporting their argument for dismissal of the corruption indictment against the mayor, Eric Adams. Judge Ho has yet to rule.
The draft sheds additional light on the circumstances surrounding the explosive decision by top officials in the Justice Department to halt the prosecution of Mr. Adams. The move set off a political crisis in New York City, where the mayor immediately faced questions about his indebtedness to the president. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department sought the dismissal in part so that Mr. Adams could aid the administration’s deportation agenda in the city.
During the Feb. 12 confirmation hearing, Mr. Blanche was questioned about the Justice Department’s decision making in seeking the dismissal of the Adams case.
Senator Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, asked Mr. Blanche whether the decisions in the case had been directed by officials in Washington, and Mr. Blanche suggested that he had no direct knowledge.
“I have the same information you have,” he said. “It appears it was, yes, I don’t know.”
Mr. Blanche struck a similar tone when asked about the case by Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, saying it was “a hypothetical” question because he only knew what he had read in the media. “I don’t believe what the media says, just as a matter of practice,” Mr. Blanche said.
A Justice Department spokesman said in a statement that Mr. Blanche had no role in decisions at the agency before he was confirmed earlier this month.
“Todd Blanche was not involved in the department’s decision-making prior to his confirmation,” the statement said.
The spokesman did not respond to additional questions about whether Mr. Blanche was aware of or involved in conversations about the decision to drop the Adams case.
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Mr. Welch said, “If this is true, it clearly indicates Blanche ‘misled’ — in plain English, lied to — the committee.”
Mr. Coons said, “The Judiciary Committee and the American people need to know whether Mr. Blanche was lying when he made these statements.”
Senate Democrats have also accused Kash Patel, the director of the F.B.I., of misleading lawmakers at his confirmation hearing about what he knew about firings and other steps being taken at the F.B.I. before Mr. Patel was in charge.
It was not immediately clear when Ms. Sassoon drafted the letter. Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove wrote in their motion that she sent it to herself on Feb. 12.
In the letter, Ms. Sassoon suggested the discussion about Mr. Blanche came in a Jan. 27 conversation she had about the Adams case with Mr. Bove. That was more than two weeks before Mr. Blanche disclaimed knowledge of the matter at his confirmation hearing.
The charges against Mr. Adams — and the Justice Department’s efforts to have them dismissed — have upended his mayoralty and damaged his efforts to win a second term. In February, four of Mr. Adams’s eight deputy mayors resigned amid concerns that the mayor was beholden to the Trump administration and that his personal interests risked outweighing those of his constituents.
After Mr. Bove and other Justice Department leaders said they would move to dismiss the case, Ms. Sassoon and at least seven other prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington resigned in protest.
Mr. Bove and Mr. Blanche are close associates, having worked together as defense lawyers for Mr. Trump in three of the criminal cases against him. Both also served as prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
Judge Ho ordered the sealed materials made public at the request of The New York Times and The New York Post.
In their motion, filed earlier this month, Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove sought to use excerpts from the Manhattan prosecutors’ internal exchanges to portray the former U.S. attorney who brought the Adams case, Damian Williams, as politically motivated, and members of the team prosecuting Mr. Adams as hypocritical.
At least some of the internal conversations about Mr. Williams stemmed from a January opinion article he published the month after he stepped down in which he wrote that the city was “being led with a broken ethical compass.” He also created a website touting his achievements, prompting widespread speculation that he was preparing to embark on a political campaign.
Defense lawyers for Mr. Adams had held up Mr. Williams’s unusual opinion piece as evidence that the Adams case was brought to enhance his own political aspirations.
According to the filing unsealed on Tuesday, the prosecutors scrambled to respond to those accusations, initiating a frank discussion about what could be argued about Mr. Williams’s motivations. The lead prosecutor on the case, Hagan Scotten, said as part of that discussion that he didn’t “want to ask anyone to reject the theory” that Mr. Williams “had a political motive in bringing this case. Seems pretty plausible to me.”
Mr. Adams’s lawyers have seized upon such comments as evidence that the case against their client was improper. In a comment on Tuesday, Alex Spiro, a defense lawyer for Mr. Adams, called the case “bogus,” saying that the prosecutors’ comments showed that it had been “based on ‘political motive’ and ‘ambition’, not facts or law.”
“The more we learn about what was really going on behind the scenes, the clearer it is that Mayor Adams should have never been prosecuted in the first place,” he said.
Judge Ho previously rejected a motion by Mr. Adams’s lawyers to dismiss the case based on Mr. Williams’s actions.
Mr. Williams declined to comment on Tuesday.
The newly unsealed documents were filed almost a month after Mr. Bove first ordered Ms. Sassoon, then the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to dismiss the five-count indictment, a directive she refused to carry out. Mr. Adams was charged with bribery, fraud, conspiracy and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations. Mr. Adams has pleaded not guilty.
The new filing sheds new light on Ms. Sassoon’s frustration with what she depicted as a hasty and superficial decision by the Justice Department — through Mr. Bove — to drop the Adams case.
In her draft letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Ms. Sassoon complained that despite her position as the U.S. attorney supervising the prosecution, she had not been able to meet with Ms. Bondi directly to discuss the “abrupt directive” by Mr. Bove to drop the case.
“I have not been given any opportunity to raise my concerns with you and the restricted discussions with Mr. Bove to date are no substitute,” Ms. Sassoon said.
She said Mr. Bove first indicated to her on Jan. 27 that he was “leaning” toward dismissing the case.
Mr. Bove gave her team only 40 minutes to discuss the chronology of the investigation, Ms. Sassoon wrote in her letter. They were allowed another 40 minutes to hear from Mr. Adams’s lawyers about how the case was hindering his ability to govern and help with Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. That was not enough time, Ms. Sassoon wrote, calling portions of the process “alarming.”
She added that Mr. Bove directed a member of her team “to shred his notes after our meeting with defense counsel.”
In her final letter to Ms. Bondi, she said Mr. Bove ordered the notes collected but omitted the reference to shredding.
In her Feb. 11 draft memo, Ms. Sassoon said she would resign if she was not granted a meeting — and she included what appeared to be an ultimatum.
“In the event of my resignation, I intend to publicly express my reasons for declining to carry out the directive delivered by Mr. Bove, despite your authority to make that demand,” she wrote.
Ms. Sassoon may have been contemplating what she might publicly say, based on another document unsealed Tuesday that was titled, “Adams PR.” It has the beginning of a resignation letter and snippets of phrases and ideas. “I want no part of this political bargain,” one said. “Do right thing right way for right reason,” said another.
On Feb. 12, Ms. Sassoon sent the final version of her memo to Ms. Bondi.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” she wrote.
Ms. Sassoon’s final memo did not say she planned to publicize the reasons for her anticipated resignation.
The day after she sent it, that memo was obtained by media outlets. It became the subject of news stories across the country.
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