Top federal prosecutor in N.Y. resigns after refusing to drop Adams charges

The top federal prosecutor in New York and two senior federal prosecutors in Washington have resigned after refusing to follow a Justice Department order to drop the corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, multiple officials said Thursday.

The resignations amount to a stunning rebuke to the new Justice Department leadership installed by the Trump administration. The resignations come three days after Emil Bove, the acting U.S. deputy attorney general, issued a memo ordering federal prosecutors in New York to drop the case against Adams in part because it hampered his ability to tackle “illegal immigration and violent crime.”

Danielle R. Sassoon announced her resignation in a brief statement to colleagues that does not refer to the directive from the Justice Department, the senior official said.

After her office refused to drop the charges, Justice Department officials sought to move the case to the agency’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, which oversees all federal public corruption cases, multiple sources said.

John Keller, the acting head of the Public Integrity Section, then resigned after also refusing to drop the Adams case, two sources said.

Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the department’s criminal Division, which oversees federal criminal cases nationwide, also refused to drop the charges and resigned.

Sassoon, who took over the office last month, was a well-respected prosecutor with unimpeachable conservative credentials. Best known for successfully prosecuting crypto whiz kid-turned-fraudster Sam Bankman Fried, she was a member of the Federalist Society and had clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was long the Supreme Court’s most influential conservative.

It was not immediately clear who would take over the office, which is sometimes referred to as the “Sovereign District of New York” for its independent streak.

Adams, a former New York police captain elected mayor in 2021, was charged in an indictment unsealed in September with one count of conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals and commit wire fraud and bribery, two counts of soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals and one count of soliciting and accepting a bribe.

The indictment accused him of taking $100,000 worth of free plane tickets and luxury hotel stays from wealthy Turkish nationals and at least one government official in a nearly decadelong corruption scheme.

Adams has pleaded not guilty. He has insisted that he is innocent and argued that the charges are politically motivated.

In his memo, Bove suggested that the case against Adams was political. It “cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior Administration’s immigration policies before the charges were filed,” Bove wrote. 

There is no evidence to suggest that the charges were pursued for that reason.

When the indictment against Adams was unsealed, James Dennehy, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, called the charges “a stinging reminder that no one is above the law or beyond reproach“ and “a sobering moment for all of us who place our trust in elected officials.”