The highest US prosecutor in Manhattan has resigned days after the US justice division instructed her workplace to drop a corruption case towards New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams.
Danielle Sassoon, a conservative lawyer lately promoted by Donald Trump, mentioned dismissing the case would have set a “breathtaking and harmful precedent”.
Adams is alleged to have accepted items totalling greater than $100,000 (£75,000) from Turkish residents in alternate for favours, corresponding to waiving security rules on the Turkish consulate within the metropolis. He denies the costs.
On Monday, a Division of Justice official mentioned the case “restricted” the mayor’s means to deal with “unlawful immigration and violent crime” within the metropolis.
The order from Emil Bove, the performing deputy legal professional common, didn’t deal with the deserves of the case towards Adams, a Democrat, and famous that the division would reserve the proper to reinstitute the costs after New York Metropolis’s mayoral election in November.
Sassoon refused to drop the case, nevertheless, setting out her reasoning in a letter to Bove’s boss, Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi, on Thursday.
“As a result of the legislation doesn’t assist a dismissal, and since I’m assured that Adams has dedicated the crimes with which he’s charged, I can not agree to hunt a dismissal pushed by improper concerns,” she wrote.
Sassoon’s mentioned she had an obligation to implement the legislation impartially, “and that features prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether or not its dismissal could be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those that appointed me.”
Bove shot again in a letter accepting her resignation. He accused Sassoon of making an attempt to “proceed pursuing a politically motivated prosecution regardless of an specific instruction to dismiss the case”.
He additionally mentioned that different prosecutors who labored on the Adams case could be positioned on depart and topic to an inner investigation – and that Sassoon would investigated as properly.
The New York mayor met with Trump in Florida days earlier than his inauguration, after which attended his swearing in ceremony on 20 January. Adams denied on the time that he mentioned his authorized points with the incoming president.
In a while Thursday, Trump instructed reporters that he had not requested for the case towards Adams to be dropped.
Nonetheless Bove’s letter described his directions as “direct orders implementing the coverage of a duly elected President”.
Adams additionally met Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan on Thursday to debate the administration’s immigration crackdown. After the assembly he mentioned he would permit federal immigration authorities to re-establish an workplace on the metropolis’s Rikers Island jail.
In an announcement, Adams mentioned: “I need to work with the brand new federal administration, not conflict with them, to search out widespread floor and make higher the lives of New Yorkers.”
Adams was indicted in September 2024 on costs of wire fraud, bribery, and receiving marketing campaign contributions from foreigners.
In response to a 57-page indictment, the mayor allegedly accepted greater than lodge stays, lavish meals and airline upgrades from Turkish nationals starting in 2016, when he was president of the New York Metropolis borough of Brooklyn.
In a single occasion, Adams is alleged to have paid $600 for a two-night keep at a luxurious lodge in Istanbul, a go to that was valued at roughly $7,000.