NEW YORK — (AP) — The Justice Department asked a court Friday to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, with a top official from Washington intervening after federal prosecutors in Manhattan rebuffed his demands to drop the case and some quit in protest.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, the department’s second-in-command, and lawyers from the public integrity section and criminal division filed paperwork asking to end the case. They contend it was marred by appearances of impropriety and that letting it continue would interfere with the mayor’s reelection bid. A judge must still approve the request.
The filing came hours after Bove convened a call with the prosecutors in the Justice Department’s public integrity section — which handles corruption cases — and gave them an hour to pick two people to sign onto the motion to dismiss, saying those who did so could be promoted, according to a person familiar with the matter.
After prosecutors got off the call with Bove, the consensus among the group was that they would all resign. But a veteran prosecutor stepped up out of concern for the jobs of the younger people in the unit, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details of the private meeting.
The three-page dismissal motion bore Bove's signature and the names of Edward Sullivan, the public integrity section’s senior litigation counsel, and Antoinette Bacon, a supervisory official in the department’s criminal division. No one from the federal prosecutor’s office in Manhattan, which brought the Adams case, signed the document.
The move came five days into a showdown between Justice Department leadership in Washington and its Manhattan office, which has long prided itself on its independence as it has taken on Wall Street malfeasance, political corruption and international terrorism.
At least seven prosecutors in Manhattan and Washington quit rather than carry out Bove's directive to halt the case, including interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and the acting chief of the public integrity section in Washington.
The Justice Department said in its motion to Judge Dale E. Ho that it was seeking to dismiss Adams’ charges with the option of refiling them later. Ho had yet to take action on the request as of Friday evening.
“I imagine the judge is going to want to explore what his role is under the rules,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor who is not involved in Adams’ case. “I would expect the court to either ask the parties to come in person to court or to file papers, or both.”
Bove said earlier this week that Trump’s permanent, appointed Manhattan U.S. attorney, who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, can decide whether to refile the charges after the November election. Adams faces a Democratic primary in June, with several challengers lined up. His trial had been on track to be held in the spring.
Bove concluded that continuing the prosecution would interfere with Adams’ ability to govern, posing “unacceptable threats to public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies," the dismissal motion said. Among other things, it said, the case caused Adams to be denied access to sensitive information necessary to help protect the city.
Adams pleaded not guilty in September to charges he accepted more than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks from foreign nationals looking to buy his influence while he was Brooklyn borough president campaigning to be mayor.
Though critical in the past, Adams has bonded at times with Trump recently and visited him at his Florida golf club last month. The president has criticized the case against Adams and said he was open to giving the mayor, who was a registered Republican in the 1990s, a pardon.
Bove sent a memo Monday directing Sassoon, a Republican, to drop the case. He argued the mayor was needed in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and echoed Adams’ claims that the case was retaliation for his criticism of Biden administration immigration policies.
Instead of complying, Sassoon resigned Thursday, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials in Washington. A day earlier, she sent a letter to Trump's new attorney general, Pam Bondi, asking her to meet and reconsider the directive to drop the case.
Sassoon suggested in her letter that Ho “appears likely to conduct a searching inquiry" as to why the case should be dismissed. She noted that in at least one instance, a judge has rejected such a request as contrary to the public interest. “A rigorous inquiry here would be consistent with precedent and practice in this and other districts," she wrote.
Seven former Manhattan U.S. attorneys, including James Comey, Geoffrey S. Berman and Mary Jo White, issued a statement lauding Sassoon’s “commitment to integrity and the rule of law."
On Friday, Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who worked for Sassoon and had a leading role in Adams' case, became the seventh prosecutor to resign — and blasted Bove in the process.
Scotten wrote in a resignation letter to Bove that it would take a "fool" or a "coward" to meet his demand to drop the charges, "But it was never going to be me." He told Bove he was "entirely in agreement" with Sassoon's decision.
Scotten and other Adams case prosecutors were suspended with pay on Thursday by Bove, who launched a probe of the prosecutors that he said would determine whether they kept their jobs.
Scotten is an Army veteran who earned two Bronze medals serving in Iraq as a Special Forces troop commander. He graduated from Harvard Law School at the top of his class in 2010 and clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.
In her letter to Bondi, Sassoon accused Adams’ lawyers of offering what amounted to a “quid pro quo” — his help on immigration in exchange for dropping the case — when they met with Justice Department officials in Washington last month.
Adams' lawyer Alex Spiro said Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was a “total lie."
“We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did," Spiro said in an email to reporters.
On Friday, Adams added: “I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”
Scotten seconded Sassoon’s objections in his letter, writing: “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."
The prosecutor, who appeared in court for various hearings in the case, said he was following “a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake."
He said he could see how a president such as Trump, with a background in business and politics, “might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal.” But he said any prosecutor “would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.”
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Richer and Tucker reported from Washington.