4 Deputy Mayors Step Down Only Days After US Attorney Made Explosive Claims About Adams Case and Resigned

In a stunning twist, the top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York resigned three days after the Trump Justice Department ordered her to drop the five-count bribery and corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams.

Six other prosecutors followed the acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon out the door, rather than follow.the order.

Then in the latest twist, four deputy mayors in the Adams Administration resigned on Feb. 17 over Adams seeming cooperation with the Trump administration in its immigration crackdown. The quartet included First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer; the deputy mayor for health and human services, Anne Williams-Isom; the deputy mayor for operations, Meera Joshi; and the deputy mayor for public safety, Chauncey Parker.

Adams confirmed their resignations in a statement.

“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said.

“Due to the extraordinary events of the last few weeks and to stay faithful to the oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families, we have come to the difficult decision to step down from our roles,” Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi said in a joint statement.

The dizzying round of resignations began a week ago when the number two person in the Trump Justice Department, Emil Bove, ordered Sassoon, the acting US Attorney in the Southern District of New York, to drop the corruption case against Adams

Bove said pursuing the case would interfere with Adams’ ability to help the Trump administration crack down on illegal migrants. He also said it was too close to upcoming elections but, bizarrely, said the order to drop the case had nothing to do with the merits of the case itself. Sassoon resigned on Feb. 14 in a terse two-sentence resignation letter to Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

But the framework was contained in a blistering letter Sassoon sent to Bondi days earlier in which she said that Adams’ attorneys had pushed for a “quid pro quo,” that the mayor would cooperate with federal efforts to pursue illegal migrants only if the case against him were dropped. When Bondi didn’t reverse the DOJ order from Bove, the No. 2 DOJ official, Sassoon resigned.

Adams who had already pleaded not guilty to the five-count corruption indictment, denied that he had pushed to exchange cooperation in the migrant crackdown for a pardon.

But Sassoon said that indeed was the thrust of a Jan. 31 meeting in Washington involving herself and several staffers, the acting deputy US Attorney General Bove, and Adams’ attorneys, Alex Spiro and another attorney.

By the end of the week, seven top prosecutors, including Sassoon, had resigned rather than sign the order seeking dismissal.

”I cannot fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office or credibly represent the government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case on this record,” she wrote in a letter to Bondi preceding her resignaton. The letter was first obtained by the New York Times.

”The government does not have a valid case to seek dismissal,” she wrote in the eight-page letter sent to Bondi. ”I cannot in good faith advance either argument,” she wrote about Bove’s reasons to order the dismissal.

Adams in a Sept. indictment was accused of accepting bribes from Turkish business executives and overseeing a campaign to have straw donors contribute to his 2021 election campaign. Adams has insisted he is not guilty and never directed staffers to break the law.

“As I said from the outset, I never broke the law, and I never would. I would never put any personal benefit above my solemn responsibility as your mayor,” Adams insisted.

Sassoon maintained that Adams should not be rewarded for actions in the negotiations to try to get the charges tossed.

”Rather than be rewarded, Adams’s advocacy should be called at for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams’s assistance in enforcing federal law, that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove’s [Feb. 10] memo.”

”The [Bove] memo suggests that the issue is merely removing an obstacle to Adams’ ability to assist with federal immigration enforcement,” Sassoon said. “It does not grapple with the differential treatment Adams would receive compared to other elected officials, much less other criminal defendants.”

At the time she wrote the letter, Sassoon was still hoping that Attorney General Bondi would overrule Bove.

”I hope you share my view that soliciting and considering the concerns of the U.S. Attorney [i.e., herself] overseeing the case serves, rather than hinders, that goal and that we can find time to meet,” Sassoon wrote, apparently soliciting a meeting that never took place.

But a meeting with Bondi, the new Trump Attorney General never happened and on Feb. 14, Sassoon resigned.

But the drama was not over. The Justice Department placed all the attorneys who worked on the Adams case on administrative leave with pay and claimed they’d launch internal investigations. With Sassoon off the job, the case was transferred to prosecutors in the Office of Public Integrity in Washington, DC. But the top two members of that office promptly resigned, and subsequently three other attorneys in the Washington DC office also resigned rather than sign a letter to Judge Dale Ho requesting that the case be dropped.

Bove wrote a scathing letter back to Sassoon following her resignation. “Your resignation is accepted,” he said. “This decision is based on your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General.”

The Trump Justice Department was finding it tough to find a Justice Department attorney to sign the order.

Hagan Scotten was the lead prosecutor on the Adams case and one of those suspended by DOJ for working on the case. He resigned a day after Sassoon.

In the resignation letter to Bove, Scotten said he was “entirely in agreement” with Sassoon’s refusal to seek dismissal of charges.

He said that the only person who would follow the letter to dismiss would be “a fool” or “a coward.”

“Any assistant US 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,” Scotten 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. But it was never going to be me.”

Other lawyers in the public prosecutors office also resigned following Sassoon’s resignation. The number of top-level resignations in the DOJ, counting Sassoon and Scotten, stood at seven by week’s end.

Late on Feb. 14, after meeting with prosecutors in the public integrity division of the DOJ in Washington, Bove finally found lawyers to sign the request for withdrawal.

The formal request to withdraw the case was signed by Bove, and two lawyers in the public prosecutors office in Washington, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette T. Bacon.

Meanwhile the resignation of four of his top deputies is increasing the pressure on Adams to resign. But Adams, as least in the first few hours remained defiant,