NEW YORK — The acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and two high-ranking Department of Justice attorneys resigned Thursday, just days after the Manhattan office was instructed to drop a five-count bribery case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. What followed was a blowup between the famously independent Manhattan prosecutor’s office and top officials at the Department of Justice.
Danielle Sassoon, who was selected by President Donald Trump’s administration to lead the Manhattan office while his permanent pick awaits Senate confirmation, quit in protest over the order to drop the Adams charges. So did the acting head of Justice’s Criminal Division, Kevin Driscoll, and the top remaining official in the Public Integrity Section, John Keller, according to a person familiar with the moves.
Sassoon’s exit, which was first reported by The New York Times, prompted an extraordinary response from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.
In an eight-page letter accepting Sassoon’s resignation, Bove excoriated the seasoned litigator and said he transferred control of Adams’ case to Justice Department headquarters in Washington and will move to dismiss the case without the cooperation of the New York office.
“Under your leadership, the office has demonstrated itself to be incapable of fairly and impartially reviewing the circumstances of this prosecution,” Bove wrote.
Bove’s move to take over the case faced protests from within Main Justice too. Driscoll and Keller also resigned rather than move to dismiss Adams’ case, the person familiar with the developments said.
Citing Sassoon’s refusal to drop the charges — which Sassoon said her office agreed with — Bove also said he is placing on paid leave the assistant prosecutors responsible for Adams’ case pending an investigation that could result in their termination.
Bove served as one of Trump’s personal lawyers before the 2024 election and is currently the No. 2 official at the Justice Department. He has led a swift and sweeping transformation inside the department, including firing prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases and seeking to collect the names of FBI agents who investigated those cases.
Sassoon appeared to have been forcefully pursuing the Adams case. In a letter on Wednesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi obtained by POLITICO, Sassoon said her office was prepared to file a new indictment against Adams alleging he destroyed evidence relevant to the case.
And last month, she clapped back at the mayor's claim that his case was retribution from the Biden administration. Sassoon noted that federal prosecutors began looking into the Democrat in 2021, before Adams began criticizing the former president over immigration policy.
Sassoon also warned Bondi that dropping the case against Adams probably won’t be simple, because Judge Dale Ho was likely to conduct a “searching inquiry” prying into the reasons for the dismissal. The ensuing litigation would be “lengthy” and “detrimental to the Justice Department’s reputation, regardless of outcome,” she wrote.
Sassoon’s resignation and Bove’s rebuke are the latest escalation in the Trump DOJ’s apparent effort to protect Adams, a Democrat, from what Trump and his top officials have described as the weaponization of the department.
On Monday, Bove penned a letter to Sassoon directing her to drop the case against Adams, who was accused of accepting illicit campaign contributions and travel perks in exchange for taking official action to benefit the Turkish government.
In his letter, Bove said Adams' pending April trial was impeding the mayor's support for Trump's immigration agenda and was hampering the mayor's reelection campaign. However, Bove did not make any decision on the merits of the case and said it could be reopened after the November mayoral election — giving the Trump administration tremendous leverage over the big city Democrat.
In her resignation letter Thursday, Sassoon argued that dismissing the case would amount to rewarding Adams for “an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case.”
Sassoon recounted the Jan. 31 meeting with Adams’ lawyers and representatives from main justice and the Southern District. “Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,” she wrote.
“The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us,” Adams’ attorney Alex Spiro said in a statement responding to Sassoon’s letter.
“We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did,” he added.
Adams moved Thursday to expand the city’s cooperation with federal immigration agents. After meeting with Trump “border czar” Tom Homan, the mayor agreed to issue an executive order overriding local “sanctuary city” laws to ICE to work on Rikers Island, the city’s jail complex.
Spiro did not provide further comment on Sassoon’s resignation or Bove’s move to dismiss Adams’ case.
A spokesperson for the Southern District for New York did not respond to a request for comment.
Adams himself welcomed Bove’s move to dismiss the charges in a speech delivered Tuesday.
“I thank the Justice Department for its honesty,” he said. “Now you can put this cruel episode behind us and focus entirely on the future of our city. It’s time to move forward.”
The tumult in the top ranks of the Justice Department came one week after Bondi was sworn in as attorney general and one day after she told reporters at her first press conference that she wasn’t aware that prosecutors had failed to act on Bove’s directive to drop the case.
“That case should be dropped,” Bondi said Wednesday, adding that she had not spoken with Sassoon about it but Bove had. “I did not know that it had not been dropped yet, but I will certainly look into that.”
The high-level resignations unfolded as Bondi was on her first trip as attorney general, visiting Munich for the widely-attended Munich Security Conference.
Asked for comment from Bondi on the resignations, a Justice Department spokesperson replied with a statement from Bove.
“No U.S. Attorney’s Office is a separate sovereign,” Bove said, alluding to the tongue-in-cheek description often given to the Manhattan federal prosecutors’ office as “the Sovereign District of New York.”
“There is no room at the Justice Department for attorneys who refuse to execute on the priorities of the Executive Branch — priorities determined by the American people,” Bove added. “I look forward to working with new leadership at SDNY on the important priorities President Trump has laid out for us to make America safe again.“
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