2025 U.S. Department of Justice resignations
In February 2025, seven prosecutors of the U.S. Department of Justice resigned in response to orders from acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
[2] On September 26, the case was unsealed, revealing the five charges: bribery, conspiracy, fraud, and two counts of soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations.
[4] Allegedly, in order to cover up his misconduct, Adams created and instructed others to make false paper trails indicating that he actually paid for these trips in full.
"[9] In January 2025, President Donald Trump appointed Danielle Sassoon as Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, pending the Senate confirmation of Jay Clayton.
[14][16] On February 12, 2025, Sassoon, who is a registered Republican and a "member of a deeply conservative Federalist Society", sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi stating her intent to resign if forced to drop charges for explicitly political reasons.
[11][17][18][10] In that letter Sassoon stated "The reasons advanced by Mr. Bove for dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with the principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making.
"[11] Bove accepted Sassoon's resignation the following day, stating that her conduct would be investigated by the Office of the Attorney General, pursuant to Executive Order 14147.
[22] Bove also accused Sassoon of violating her duty: "In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President.
In short, the first justification for the motion - that Damian Williams's role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment support by ample evidence, and pursued four different U.S. attorneys - is so weak as to be transparently pretextual.
No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.
[26] On February 13, 2024, five officials would resign from the Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Division rather than carry out the administration's order to dismiss the case.
"[11] According to former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade posting on X: "DOJ leadership [put] all Public Integrity Section lawyers into a room with 1 hour to decide who will dismiss Adams indictment or else all will be fired...Sending them strength to stand by their oath, which is to support the Constitution, not the president’s political agenda.
'"[31][20] Homan later rejected accusations that this discussion illustrated a quid pro quo regarding the dismissal of charges against Adams: "I really don’t think it had anything to do with whatever’s going on in the Justice Department...We never talked about that.
"[11] A former DOJ official stated that normally this sort of action would be met with widespread political opposition: "In any other world, the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Judiciary Committee would be immediately plunging into action...You’d have the IG [inspector general] launching an investigation, you’d have OPR [the Office of Professional Responsibility] launching an investigation.
"[33] Reuters stated that this case "illustrated the tensions between the traditional U.S. conservative Republican legal movement and Trump's desire to exert far more direct control of the federal government, challenging standards of prosecutorial independence that have stood for a half century.
"[17] Paul Tuchmann, a former federal prosecutor, said Bove's referral of Sassoon and Scotten for an investigation into misconduct was sending a signal to the rest of the Department of Justice: "If you do anything that's not exactly what he wants, you're going to be punished regardless of whether or not what he wants is appropriate or ethical.
In short, the extension of the logic of plea-bargain conditions into the realm of compliant policy actions by public officials is very much the politicization of criminal justice.
[34]Journalists and legal scholars have compared the series of resignations to the Saturday Night Massacre, when president Richard Nixon ordered DOJ executives to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor heading the Watergate investigation.
