Three more federal prosecutors who had been involved in the now-dismissed corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned on Tuesday, saying they felt pressured into admitting wrongdoing or regret as a condition for being reinstated to their jobs.
“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom wrote in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The three assistant U.S. attorneys had been placed on leave after a number of prosecutors in New York and Washington refused to follow orders to end the case against Adams, a Democrat.
Cohen, Rohrbach and Wikstrom say it had become clear that one of the “preconditions” Blanche placed on them returning to the job was to “express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case.”
The new leaders of the Justice Department, they wrote, had “decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington. That is wrong.”
The letter was published by several news outlets. Its authenticity was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person who received the letter.
“There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons,” the prosecutors wrote. “We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs. We resign.”
The letter came the same day that Jay Clayton, former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was sworn in as the New York office’s new interim top prosecutor. Clayton said in a statement he “would like to thank President Trump and Attorney General Bondi for this remarkable opportunity.” Mr. Trump also nominated Clayton to lead the office on a permanent basis, but he has not yet been confirmed by the Senate.
Adams was indicted last year, accused of taking illegal campaign contributions and travel perks from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy influence when he previously served as Brooklyn borough president.
In February, after Mr. Trump took office, the Justice Department ordered then-acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, to drop the charges against Adams — not due to the merits of the case, but rather so the mayor could assist in the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, suggested that Adams was being prosecuted because he had criticized former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Sassoon opted to resign instead, accusing the department of a “quid pro quo” and saying she was “baffled” by the department’s decisions. She also argued “dismissing the case will amplify, rather than abate, concerns about weaponization of the Department,” and revealed prosecutors had considered bringing other charges against Adams for allegedly making false statements and destroying evidence. Several other career prosecutors resigned after Sassoon.
The Adams case was eventually dismissed in April, though Judge Dale E. Ho dropped the charges with prejudice, meaning the government cannot refile them.
In dismissing the case, Ho noted that the record showed the prosecutors who worked on the case had followed all guidelines.
“There is no evidence — zero — that they had any improper motives,” Ho wrote in his ruling.
The Justice Department didn’t immediately have any comment.
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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report from Washington.
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