DOJ moves to dismiss Adams corruption charges amid prosecutor exodus

On Friday, the Justice Department formally filed paperwork asking a federal court to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The motion came from Acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove and lawyers from the department's public integrity and criminal divisions in Washington. A judge will need to approve the request before the case ends.

The filing marked the culmination of a week of extraordinary upheaval inside the Justice Department. At least seven prosecutors across New York and Washington resigned rather than comply with orders to abandon the case. Among them was Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney who had worked on the Adams prosecution. Also resigning were Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and the acting chief of the public integrity section, along with five other high-ranking Justice Department officials in Washington.

The charges against Adams alleged he accepted more than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel from foreign nationals seeking to influence his decisions while he was Brooklyn borough president and running for mayor. Sassoon had refused Bove's directive to drop the case and submitted her resignation Thursday, the day after she sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bove responded with a sharply worded letter of his own.

Bove, who had represented Donald Trump in criminal cases before Trump's reelection in November, justified the dismissal by arguing that Adams was needed for the administration's immigration enforcement efforts and to combat violent crime. He also suggested the charges had been brought too close to the mayoral election and could potentially be refiled after the vote. The motion seeks dismissal without prejudice, a legal mechanism that would allow prosecutors to revive the charges at a later date.

Scotten's resignation letter articulated the prosecutors' core objection. An Army veteran with two Bronze medals from service in Iraq as a Special Forces commander, Scotten had graduated from Harvard Law School in 2010 and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. In his letter to Bove, he wrote that no system of ordered liberty could permit the government to use the prospect of dismissing charges—or the threat of refiling them—to pressure an elected official into supporting policy objectives. He acknowledged that a businessman-politician like Trump might view such a maneuver as a reasonable deal, but he argued that any prosecutor would understand that American law and tradition forbid using prosecutorial power to influence citizens, let alone elected officials, in this manner. He concluded by saying he expected Bove would eventually find someone willing to file the motion, "but it was never going to be me."

Adams' legal team had met with Justice Department officials in Washington the previous month. Sassoon alleged in her letter that Adams' lawyers had offered what amounted to a quid pro quo arrangement tied to immigration matters. Adams' attorney, Alex Spiro, flatly denied this characterization, saying the team had offered nothing and the department had asked nothing of them. When asked about immigration and national security, Spiro said they answered truthfully that the case had bearing on those areas. On Friday, Adams himself issued a statement: "I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered—nor did anyone offer on my behalf—any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never."

Bove had suspended the prosecutors with pay on Thursday and launched an investigation into their conduct, suggesting their jobs were at risk. When he conferred with prosecutors in the public integrity section Friday and instructed them to decide among themselves who would sign the dismissal motion, he made clear that refusing to cooperate could cost them their positions. Under this pressure, one prosecutor agreed to sign. Chad Mizelle, Bondi's chief of staff, characterized the decision to drop the case as proof that the Justice Department would return to prosecuting dangerous criminals rather than pursuing what he called politically motivated witch hunts. He suggested that prosecutors who refused direct orders had no place at the department. A judge still must approve the motion before the case is formally ended.