CNN
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Call it the Thursday afternoon massacre.
The Justice Department is in crisis after a surprising resignation over DOJ’s decision to halt New York Mayor Eric Adams’ prosecutor in the United States on corruption charges, a top Manhattan prosecutor and five other senior officials. Masu.
It took less than a month for Donald Trump’s new DOJ to be engulfed in the controversy that the president’s political objectives are compromising the application of the law.
The drama reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre of Watergate fame is tasked with Justice Department officials opposing Trump’s DOJ leadership to end the “weaponization” of justice, but which critics fear This represents the most attention-grabbing effort that repeats before the fact that it is. that.
Daniel Sasson, who quit as a US lawyer representing the Southern District of New York, laid out a stunning allegation of political interference in a letter to new Attorney General Pam Bondy. And she said the lawyers for the mayor of New York City have repeatedly urged Adams to help Trump with his hard-line immigration policies if the lawsuit is dropped.
Sussone said that her DOJ’s order to dismiss the case against the Democratic mayor “contradicts his ability and obligation to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor, and that he can advance a debate of good beliefs before the court. It’s contradictory.”
Adams’ lawyers on Thursday said the idea that there was a Quid Pro was a “complete lie,” and the mayor’s legal team asked prosecutors if the case had anything to do with national security and immigration enforcement. He said that he was. did. ”
Sussone’s resignation appears to be a brave act on its surface that sacrifices her promising career to thwart any obvious attempts to politicize justice.
Her claim added a significant new context to an earlier Justice Department memo, claiming that prosecutors “unfairly limited Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crimes.”
In itself, the memo was extraordinary as it suggested that the prosecution had been shelved because it contradicted the president’s political priorities. For example, the memo said it reached a decision to remove the case without assessing “the strength of evidence or the legal theory underlying the case.”
Sussone’s complaints were filled with remarkably brave letters from Emil Bove, the acting assistant attorney general, a former member of Trump’s personal legal team. He accused her of continuing to pursue “politically motivated charges despite explicit instructions to dismiss the case.”
Facing reelection this fall, Adams was charged in September with bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy and soliciting campaign contributions from foreigners in exchange for political favors.
He denied all wrongdoing and frequently said it was a politically motivated recall for his criticism of the failed arrival of immigrants in New York.
The administration’s handling of the Adams case appears to be saying what Trump says is an effort to cleanse the “weaponization” of justice.
“I’m all removing the Department of Justice,” former Associate Deputy Attorney General Thomas Dupree, who is also a Conservative, told CNN’s Catelan Collins. “But the way you weaponize the Department of Justice is to remove politics from the equation,” Dupree wrote, “The administration explicitly injected political considerations into law enforcement decisions. “He said he suggested.
The controversy is immediately skeptical of the future of DOJ, which seeks to dismiss the case against Adams.
Sassoon resigned before Bove acted on a plan to fire her, the two familiar with the matter said.
But given that DOJ is just Trump’s liberal, deep national critic, given that Sasson has impeccable conservative credentials and was just selected to lead SDNY with his acting skills by the president. It would be difficult to make a point. For example, she was written for the late Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia. In her letter, she said the conservative icon was one of the leaders who taught her to support the rule of law and advance the public interest.
Trump denied ordering the Justice Department to dismiss the charges against Adams, a Democrat who evolved into a prominent critic of former President Joe Biden and who has developed personal ties with the current president.
“No, I didn’t,” Trump told CNN’s Kevin Liptuck in his oval office. “I don’t know anything about it. I didn’t,” Trump declared back to Liptok and added: “I’m not going to do that.” “I don’t know if a US lawyer was actually fired or if he or she resigned, but a US lawyer has been fired.”
But the incredible exchange of letters and the furious language used by Bove and Sassoon, means the Adams incident.
“We’re rare here. This is completely unprecedented,” Ellie Honig, a CNN legal analyst who once worked for SDNY, told Anderson Cooper. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
In her letter, Sasson argued that DOJ had no good reason to dismiss the case. He said the evidence against Adams was healthy. He warned that the fire “affects, rather than alleviating concerns about the division’s weaponization.”
She recently recalled the oath she had loyal and swearing to swear faithfully in her office duties, and said that insisting on the dismissal of Adams case in court was inconsistent with that promise.
In one of the most notable sentences of her letter to Bondi, Sasson cuts off Bove’s argument that the Adams case should be dismissed in exchange for his support in enforcing federal immigration law. She said the mayor argued, Bove clearly agreed, “Adam holds a significant public position and can use that position to support the administration’s policy priorities, federal crimes, merely because he can use his position to support the administration’s policy priorities. “We should receive generosity from.”
This is surprising because establishing such principles could allow civil servants to avoid allegations of corruption by their positional dandants. This is a scenario where there is a risk of destroying public trust in political and legal institutions.
Later in her letter, Sasson further discusses the political weaponization of justice, writing: For those who have appointed accused or me in politically beneficial. ”
Bove relies on the Public Integrity section of Justice Department headquarters to handle the termination, according to two people familiar with the matter. That step appears to have led to the resignation of Kevin Driscoll, the top career prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section, and John Keller, the office’s representative. Three additional public integrity prosecutors also filed for resignation later Thursday, according to two sources.
Cascade’s departure at the Department of Justice reminded me of the “Saturday Night Massacre.” This was when several prosecutors and officials resigned after special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who honoured President Richard Nixon to drop a White House tape summon during the 1973 Watergate scandal. That’s when I did.
Ryan Goodman, a professor at New York University Law School, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
“It’s incredible. It’s written here and I’m sure federal judges across the country are reading these letters and are deeply disturbed by what’s going on at the highest level of the Department of Justice. .
“Integrity and courage”
What’s unusual about this incident is that signs of the political weaponization of the DOJ can be seen in official communications of the department itself.
For example, Bove tells Sussone that she lost sight of the oath because she suggested that she retained discretion to interpret the constitution in a way that contradicts the policies of the democratically elected president and the senator’s lawyer general. ”
However, since the Watergate scandal, the DOJ has generally tried to maintain its distance from the White House to avoid perception of political bias. The duty of the prosecutor is not to the president’s policy, but to the neutral government of the constitution and judicial judicial.
Harry Sandick, a former US lawyer for SDNY, said Sasson’s “surprising” letter reminded him of the question that office job seekers were being asked about the need to be honest with the court.
He told Barnett: It is unethical and could contradict my duty as a prosecutor. ”
