The Justice Department requested a court Friday to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, with a high official from Washington intervening after federal prosecutors in Manhattan refused to drop the case, prompting some to leave in protest. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the department’s second-in-command and lawyers from the public integrity and criminal divisions submitted a motion to close the case. They argue that perceptions of impropriety damaged it and that allowing it to continue would jeopardize the mayor’s reelection campaign. A court must still grant the request.
According to a person familiar with the matter, the filing came hours after Bove convened a call with prosecutors in the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which handles corruption cases, and gave them an hour to choose two people to sign the motion to dismiss, saying those who did so could be promoted. After prosecutors ended the discussion with Bove, the group agreed to quit. However, a seasoned prosecutor stepped up out of worry for the careers of the unit’s younger members, according to the individual, who spoke anonymously to discuss the private discussion.
Bove signed the three-page dismissal motion, including the names of Edward Sullivan, the public integrity section’s senior litigation counsel, and Antoinette Bacon, a supervisory officer in the department’s criminal division. No one from the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office, who handled the Adams case, signed the paper.
The decision came five days into a standoff between Justice Department leadership in Washington and its Manhattan office, which has traditionally prided itself on its independence as it combats Wall Street misdeeds, political corruption, and international terrorism. At least seven prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington resigned rather than comply with Bove’s order to suspend the case, including interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and the acting chief of the public integrity division in Washington. The Justice Department stated in its application to Judge Dale E. Ho that it intended to dismiss Adams’ charges with the possibility of refiling them later. He has not acted on the request as of Friday evening.
“I imagine the judge is going to want to explore his role under the rules,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor unrelated to Adams’ case.”I would expect the court to either ask the parties to come in person to court or to file papers, or both.” Bove stated earlier this week that Trump’s permanent, nominated Manhattan US attorney, who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, will be able to determine whether to refile the charges after the November election.Â
Scotten stated in his resignation letter to Bove that it would take a “fool” or a “coward” to satisfy his demand to dismiss the accusations, “But it was never going to be me.” He informed Bove that he was “completely in agreement” with Sassoon’s choice. Scotten and other Adams case prosecutors were suspended with pay on Thursday by Bove, who announced an investigation into the prosecutors that will determine whether they maintained their positions.
Scotten is an Army veteran who served as a Special Forces troop commander in Iraq, earning two Bronze medals. In 2010, he graduated from Harvard Law School at the top of his class and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, said Thursday that the quid pro quo claim was a “total lie.” “We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement, and we truthfully answered that it did,” Spiro said in an email to reporters.
On Friday, Adams continued, “I never proposed — nor did anybody offer on my behalf — any surrender of my authority as your mayor in exchange for the resolution of my lawsuit. Never.” Scotten echoed Sassoon’s concerns in his letter: “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of intending to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy aims.” The prosecutor testified in court at many sessions in the case and stated that he was following “a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake.”
He said he could see how a president like Trump, who has business and political experience, “might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal.” However, he maintained that any 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.”
