Pressure on anti-corruption prosecutors to favor NY mayor sparks revolt at Justice Department

Befriending Donald Trump pays off big time. Just ask Elon Musk who, thanks to the U.S. president, has become the most powerful man in the Republican administration; or Vladimir Putin, who stands to benefit from the White House plan to end the war in Ukraine; or, on a smaller but very significant scale, New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has become so ingratiating with Trump in recent months that on Tuesday the Justice Department requested the dismissal of five corruption charges against him.

The case may seem anecdotal, even though Adams is the first mayor of New York to be indicted in modern history. But the earthquake triggered within the Justice Department by the interference in Adams’ favor is not: at least seven resignations in 48 hours. These include the interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York — the most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office in the country — who, to top it off, is a hard-line Republican, as well lawyers and officials of the Department itself in Washington. All their resignation letters denounced the political pressure from the White House on a theoretically independent power. Ultimately, at least one lawyer agreed to sign the request to dismiss the case after Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s career public integrity prosecutors in a meeting on Friday that they had an hour to decide among themselves who would file the motion, or face the consequences, Reuters reported. Other sources said more than one prosecutor signed. A federal judge must now approve the decision.

For Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, the fact that the president ordered the dismissal of a strong criminal case against a mayor in exchange for political favors, and that DOJ lawyers resigned, is in and of itself “one of the biggest scandals is U.S. history. Recalls Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre,” he posted on Thursday on the social network Bluesky, alluding to the evening of October 20, 1973, when the president’s sudden dismissal of the special prosecutor for the Watergate affair, which ended up digging Nixon’s political grave, triggered a wave of resignations. “That alone is It’s just one of many now, but worth remembering how the US used to have standards.”

The news site Axios described what happened on Friday as a civil war in the Department of Justice, which is being used by Trump to pardon his friends and supporters, such as the 1,500 people prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol, or to help those who do him favors, and when necessary, as a battering ram to attack his enemies. In return, Adams, mayor of a city that has until now been a sanctuary for migrants, is supporting the White House’s immigration policy, bowing to ICE and, since Friday, making it easier for his agents to identify and detain migrants inside the ominous Rikers Island prison. This kind of access pulverizes a protection that had been in place since the 1980s.

In September, after being charged with receiving money and other benefits from Turkey in exchange for fast-tracking building permits for the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite security failures, Adams began to get closer to Trump, first openly claiming that both had been unjust victims of political persecution (the Republican’s favorite mantra during his judicial odyssey). Then, after Trump was elected president, by showing his willingness to collaborate with the new administration’s mass deportation campaign, despite criticism from his fellow Democrats. Adams, who on Thursday received Tom Homan, the president’s so-called border czar, in New York, soon later signed a decree that gives access to Rikers Island to the immigration police.

But the scandal goes far beyond Adams, who is seeking re-election in November but whose political credibility is in tatters. The revolt at the Justice Department is even more striking given the identity of some of those who resigned (some of them on their own initiative; others have been automatically placed on administrative leave for refusing to obey). Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had a promising career ahead of her at 38 years of age until she rejected the order to dismiss the case against Adams on Thursday. A Republican who once clerked for Judge Antonin Scalia, this prosecutor stood up to Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general of the United States, after he gave her the order to forget about the Adams case.

The Justice Department has become an extension of Trump’s legal team; it is no coincidence that Bove was once the lead defense attorney in the hush money trial, in which Trump was convicted of 34 crimes for altering business accounts to conceal payments to a porn actress in exchange for her silence.

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