Fallout Escalates Over DOJ's Decision on Eric Adams

Controversy over the Justice Department's push to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams is only growing. Another top prosecutor resigned on Friday from the Manhattan US attorney's office rather than carry out the order, reports the Wall Street Journal. His is the seventh resignation since Thursday, notes CNN. Details:

• Backing up: This all started when the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Emil Bove, ordered the Manhattan office to drop its corruption case against Adams. In response, the top prosecutor in that office, Danielle Sassoon, resigned and wrote in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that she was "baffled" by the order.
• About Sassoon: "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," wrote Sassoon. She is a 38-year-old Republican who clerked under the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to Reuters, which has a profile of the Harvard grad. In her letter, Sassoon accused the Justice Department of striking a quid-pro-quo deal with Adams in exchange for his help on immigration matters.

• Friday resignation: On Friday, prosecutor Hagan Scotten wrote a scathing letter to Bove in tendering his own resignation from the Manhattan office. Any "assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way," he wrote. "If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion." Scotten, who clerked for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts, was the lead prosecutor on the mayor's case, notes the Washington Post. He made clear in his letter that he did not view the Trump administration negatively, but found this particular order outrageous.
• Denial: Adams' attorney, Alex Spiro, denies any such quid-pro-quo. "We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us," he tells the AP. "We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did."
• Groundwork: The New York Times reports on multiple meetings that took place between Adams' attorneys and top Justice Department officials since President Trump took office. "The series of events—in which the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department seemed to guide criminal defense lawyers toward a rationale for dropping charges against a high-profile client—represents an extraordinary shattering of norms for an agency charged with enforcing the laws of the United States," per the story. The controversy also "sends a message that, under the Trump administration, the Justice Department will make prosecutorial decisions based not on the merits of a case but on purely political concerns," a concern voiced by both prosecutors and defense lawyers interviewed.

(More Justice Department stories.)