The Justice Department formally asked a court Friday to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, an expected move after that was fiercely opposed by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan who brought the case.
Acting Deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove, the department’s second-in-command, and lawyers from the department’s public integrity section and criminal division in Washington filed paperwork seeking to end the case. A judge still has to approve the request.
The formal move to end the prosecution came days into an epic showdown between Justice Department leadership in Washington and its office in New York, which has long prided itself on its independence.
At least seven prosecutors in New York and Washington quit rather than carry out Bove’s directive to halt the case, including the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan and the acting chief of the public integrity section.
The Justice Department's three-page motion sought to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning the charges could be revived in the future.
RELATED STORY | Prosecutor who quit after refusing to drop case says she's confident NYC Mayor Adams 'committed the crimes'
The filing capped another whirlwind day of recriminations and another resignation.
Earlier, Bove conferred with prosecutors in the department’s public integrity section and instructed them to decide among themselves who would sign the dismissal motion.
After they were told that their jobs were at risk if no one stepped forward, one agreed to do it, according to a person briefed on the discussions who insisted on anonymity to speak about a private meeting.
As Justice Department officials worked to seize control of the case and end it, another Manhattan prosecutor involved in the Adams case resigned — and blasted Bove in the process.
Hagan 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.
Scotten, along with other prosecutors in the case against Adams, was suspended with pay on Thursday by acting deputy U.S. Attorney General Emil Bove, who launched a probe of the prosecutors that he said would determine whether they kept their jobs.
Bove, who had represented Donald Trump against criminal charges before he was reelected as president in November, on Monday directed Danielle Sassoon, a Republican and the interim U.S. attorney in New York, to drop the charges against Adams.
Instead, she resigned on Thursday, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials in Washington, a day after she sent a letter to Trump's new attorney general, Pam Bondi.
In response to her resignation, Bove wrote a scathing and scolding letter back.
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 a resignation letter to Bove, Scotten said he was “entirely in agreement” with Sassoon's refusal to seek dismissal of charges that the mayor had accepted over $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.
Among reasons for seeking to have charges dropped, Bove said the mayor was needed in the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts and to decrease violent crime. He also said the charges were brought too close to this year's mayoral contest and could be reinstated after the election.
In her letter, Sassoon accused Adams’ lawyers of offering what amounted to a “quid pro quo” on immigration 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 offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us," Spiro said in an email to reporters. “We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did."
On Friday, Adams denied there was any deal to make the case go away.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: 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," the mayor said in a statement.
In his resignation letter, Scotten wrote: “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 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 Scotten 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.”
He added: “If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.”
Adams, a Democrat, pleaded not guilty to the charges in September but has recently bonded at times with Trump, who has criticized the case against Adams and said he was open to giving Adams, who was a registered Republican in the 1990s, a pardon.
