The corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams may have been dropped and the case dismissed, but the fallout still continues.
Three federal prosecutors announced their resignations Tuesday, saying that they would quit their jobs rather than admit wrongdoing in continuing to pursue the case against Adams, The New York Times reports.
In an email, prosecutors Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, and Derek Wikstrom, who all worked on the Adams case, said that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made their admitting to wrongdoing a condition of their reinstatement from administrative leave, after corruption charges against Adams were dropped in February.
“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” the trio wrote in the email, adding, “Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington.”
Adams spent much of 2024 openly lobbying President Trump to intervene in the federal charges against him for bribery, fraud, and soliciting political donations from Turkish officials in exchange for favors. His efforts paid off two months ago, although comments from Trump’s border czar Tom Homan made it seem like the DOJ was dropping charges in exchange for Adams cracking down on immigrants in New York City.
Seven prosecutors resigned last month rather than carry out the order from Washington to drop the charges. Now, even though the case was dismissed with prejudice, preventing the Trump administration from using it as leverage over Adams in the future, it appears that the administration tried to get a show of fealty from Manhattan federal prosecutors. While three of them refused, Trump’s DOJ has won the chance to install loyalist attorneys to protect the president and his friends.
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