Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.Then, when Justice Department officials sought to transfer the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption cases, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.The resignations represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department. They were a stunning repudiation of the administration’s attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams.The departures of the U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, and the officials who oversaw the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, came in rapid succession on Thursday. Days earlier, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Emil Bove III, had ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop the case against Mr. Adams.The agency’s justification for dropping the case was explicitly political; Mr. Bove had argued that the investigation would prevent Mr. Adams from fully cooperating with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Bove made a point of saying that Washington officials had not evaluated the strength of the evidence or the legal theory behind the case.Ms. Sassoon, in a remarkable letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, said that Mr. Bove’s order to dismiss the case was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”“I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,” she said. “I therefore deem it necessary to the faithful discharge of my duties to raise the concerns expressed in this letter with you and to request an opportunity to meet to discuss them further.”Ms. Sassoon, 38, made a startling accusation in her letter. She wrote that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what she said amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”She said that Mr. Bove had scolded a member of her team for taking notes during the meeting and ordered that the notes be collected at the meeting’s end.Ms. Sassoon also wrote that her office had proposed a superseding indictment against the mayor that would have added a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. The charge, she wrote, would have been “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the F.B.I.” It would also have included additional accusations about his “participation in a straw donor scheme.”Mr. Bove accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation in his own eight-page letter on Thursday, in which he blasted her handling of the case and decision to disobey his order.He told her the prosecutors who had worked on the case against Mr. Adams were being placed on administrative leave because they, too, were unwilling to obey his order.He said they would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm. He also told Ms. Sassoon both bodies would evaluate her conduct.But the internal investigations ordered by Mr. Bove could prove risky for him. Officials will likely review Mr. Bove’s conduct as well, and the judge overseeing the case could demand answers from Justice Department officials in Washington.Mr. Bove’s letter offered a window into a dispute that has been raging between the Justice Department officials in Washington and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, out of sight of the public.On Thursday afternoon, according to a pool report, Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had not asked for the case against Mr. Adams to be dropped.But Mr. Bove’s letter made explicit that he believed Mr. Trump — whom he formerly served as his criminal defense lawyer — held sway over the Justice Department, which for decades has operated at a remove from the White House.“In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President,” he wrote to Ms. Sassoon, “and anyone romanticizing that behavior does a disservice to the nature of this work and the public’s perception of our efforts.”He wrote he had accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation “based on your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”Until recently, Mr. Bove was one of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, representing him in his New York State criminal trial last year. The trial led to Mr. Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that had threatened to derail his 2016 campaign.The Southern District has long been viewed as the nation’s most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office, and has a reputation for guarding its independence and fending off interference from Washington, winning it the nickname “the Sovereign District.”A spokesman for the office did not comment. An official with the Justice Department in Washington declined to comment.Ms. Sassoon notified her office of her decision to resign on Thursday in a brief email shortly before 2 p.m. The office has not filed a motion to dismiss the case.“Moments ago, I submitted my resignation to the attorney general,” she wrote in the email, the text of which was provided to The New York Times. “As I told her, it has been my greatest honor to represent the United States and to pursue justice as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.”She continued: “It has been a privilege to be your colleague, and I will be watching with pride as you continue your service to the United States.”It was not immediately clear who would replace her, but typically, it would be the office’s No. 2 official, the deputy U.S. attorney, a role currently held by Matthew Podolsky.The Trump administration last month named Ms. Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor, to head the office on an interim basis while Mr. Trump’s choice for the job, Jay Clayton, awaited Senate confirmation. She was quickly swept into conversations with Justice Department officials about the criminal case against Mr. Adams.The commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, whose staff worked on the case against the mayor, said in a statement that her agency had “conducted its work apolitically, guided solely by the facts and the law.”The commissioner, Jocelyn E. Strauber, also underscored that the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the case was unrelated to the evidence.Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, stemming from an investigation that began in 2021. Mr. Adams had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April.Then, on Monday, Mr. Bove directed Ms. Sassoon to dismiss the case. She was also told to cease all further investigative steps against Mr. Adams until a review could be conducted by the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, presumably Mr. Clayton, after the mayoral election in November.Ms. Sassoon joined the Southern District in 2016. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, she clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.In 2023, Ms. Sassoon was named co-chief of the Southern District’s criminal appeals unit, the position she held when she was promoted last month to interim U.S. attorney.Mr. Bove in his Monday memo said that the dismissal of charges was necessary because the indictment “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources” to Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and had “improperly interfered” with Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign.The memo criticized the timing of the charges and “more recent public actions” of Damian Williams, the former U.S. attorney who brought the case, which Mr. Bove said had “threatened the integrity” of the proceedings by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity that could taint potential witnesses and jurors.Mr. Bove appeared to be referring to an article Mr. Williams wrote last month, after leaving office, in which he said New York City was “being led with a broken ethical compass.”The indictment against Mr. Adams was announced in September by Mr. Williams, who led the office during the Biden administration. Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has claimed that he was targeted because of his criticism of the administration over the migrant crisis — an assertion the Southern District has rebutted, noting that the investigation began well before the mayor made those comments.Mr. Adams has praised parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, visited him near his Mar-a-Lago compound and attended his inauguration a few days later. The two men did not discuss a pardon, but Mr. Trump spoke about a “weaponized” Justice Department, The New York Times reported.Mr. Trump had criticized Mr. Adams’s prosecution, saying the mayor had been “treated pretty unfairly,” and had floated the possibility of a pardon.On Jan. 22, just after Ms. Sassoon was elevated to her post, the Southern District vigorously defended its prosecution in a court filing made in her name. The filing cited “concrete evidence” that Mr. Adams had taken illegal campaign contributions. It called his claim that his prosecution was politically motivated an attempt to divert attention “from the evidence of his guilt.”Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, Adam Goldman and Jan Ransom contributed reporting.
