Holding the Line

Why it matters that career prosecutors resigned in the Mayor Adams case

By Arianna Berg

After five days, seven DOJ resignations, and an increasingly urgent search for a prosecutor—any prosecutor—willing to file the motion to dismiss the charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, the motion to dismiss was finally filed Friday evening.

By Friday afternoon last week, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III was acting progressively more desperate. His Monday directive to Danielle Sassoon, Acting US Attorney of the Southern District of New York, to move to dismiss the Adams case had resulted in Sassoon’s resignation. It was then followed in rapid succession by the resignation of six other line prosecutors in the SDNY and the Public Integrity Section, including Kevin Driscoll, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s criminal division; John D. Keller, Acting Chief of the Public Integrity Section; and Hagan Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor on the Adams case in the SDNY.

As Sassoon explained in her clear and measured eight-page letter to Pam Bondi, Sassoon could not fulfill her obligations under New York’s Code of Professional Responsibility for lawyers and Bondi’s February 5, 2025 memo to act in good faith and with candor before a court by seeking a dismissal of the Adams case, “because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged.”

On Friday afternoon, in a reportedly tense video conference with approximately 20 prosecutors from the Public Integrity Section of the DOJ in Washington, D.C., Bove threw down the gauntlet. According to those present at the meeting, Bove gave the prosecutors a deadline of one hour to provide him with the names of two attorneys who would sign the motion to dismiss the Adams case. After much discussion, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon agreed to sign the motion. Sullivan reportedly agreed to sign in an act of loyalty to his colleagues, doing so in part to save them from being fired for disagreeing with the directive.

It was a messy finish to an unseemly ask by the Acting Deputy Attorney General. Nevertheless, Bove won in the short term.

This begs the question: were the brave letters and resignations of these seven career prosecutors in vain? Was it just kicking the can of justice down the road because there will always be a bench of warm bodies in the DOJ who are willing to fill in and comply with future orders, even if they similarly lack an appropriate, legitimate, or (worse) ethical basis?

The answer in my mind is loud and clear: these prosecutors’ actions were not empty or rendered meaningless due to subsequent events. There are four reasons why their heroic actions are incredibly important in this case and for the future of our justice system:

1. The Adams Indictment is a validly returned indictment based on sound proof, and that is reason alone to fight to keep it. The charges against Adams, a Democratic Mayor, are serious ones of bribery, seeking illegal campaign donations, and wire fraud in exchange for granting favors to Turkish nationals and at least one government official. The 57-page indictment was the result of a years-long investigation that covered conduct by Adams and his staffers from 2015 to 2023. Notably, SDNY prosecutors chose to seek a speaking indictment from the Grand Jury, which is a longer and more detailed form of indictment, that has allowed us a glimpse into the mountains of evidence that prosecutors had amassed, including text messages, emails, voice notes, phone calls, bank records, search warrant evidence, and cooperating witness testimony from at least one former Adams staffer. In other words, this was a meticulously-built case that predated any possible allegation of being politically motivated and was solidly grounded in proof.

2. Bove did not articulate a valid basis upon which to seek dismissal of the indictment, such as lack of proof of Adams’ innocence, and instead argued that the case should be dismissed for what appeared to be a pretextual quid pro quo with Adams. In large part, he argued that Adams should be free from criminal prosecution so he could assist the Trump Administration with immigration enforcement. Bove did not even attempt to couch his directive in a legitimate argument, and remarkably acknowledged at the outset of his February 9th memo that DOJ has not assessed the strength of the evidence or the legal theories of the case, and had “in no way call[ed] into question the integrity and efforts of the line prosecutors responsible for the case, or your efforts in leading those prosecutors in connection with a matter you inherited.”

   Scotten had his own remarks about the integrity of Bove’s order in his blistering resignation letter, stating that “[n]o 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.”

3. The Adams case is not yet over, and thanks to the actions of these brave prosecutors, what happens next will further expose Bove’s political machinations. Under Rule 48(a) FRCP, the Government may dismiss an indictment “with leave of the court.” Before deciding whether to grant such leave, Judge Ho has set a hearing in Manhattan Federal Court at 2 pm ET on Wednesday to discuss the reasons for the Government’s motion to dismiss. Expect that inquiry to be a searching one, as Sassoon’s and Scotten’s detailed letters raised grave concerns about the motivations behind Bove’s directive to dismiss the case. In addition, late Monday night, three former U.S. Attorneys from the SDNY, New Jersey, and Connecticut took the remarkable step of filing a brief asking the Judge to conduct an extensive inquiry into whether the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss was properly predicated.

   In Wednesday’s hearing, Judge Ho will have some, albeit limited, latitude to deny the motion if he finds that dismissing the case is against the public interest. But in practical terms, the case likely is as much as over. It would be rare and practically difficult for a judge to order DOJ to keep a case alive which it no longer wishes to pursue. Nevertheless, if there is a case in which such latitude may be used, it is this one. It is thanks to Sassoon’s and Scotten’s detailed letters outlining their concerns, the brave resignations of the seven prosecutors, and the exceedingly unusual outspokenness of over 900 former federal prosecutors and former US Attorneys that this case has even a shot at surviving. This hearing tomorrow will, at a minimum, bring even more attention to the subject—and sunlight really is the best disinfectant.

4. Even though the Adams case is likely over, prosecutors and DOJ attorneys make an oath to something higher than fealty to any one public official or administration, or to any one case. All prosecutors vow to uphold such principles as justice, integrity, and the impartial pursuit of cases without fear or favor; we are trained to be devoted to the rule of law no matter the weather. These principles are worth fighting for, and thankfully generations of former federal prosecutors stand behind Sassoon, Scotten, and the others in honoring this tradition. Let the gravitational pull of ethics and integrity draw more and more prosecutors into continuing to stand for the rule of law, no matter the political climate.

As Scotten so hauntingly stated, “...I expect you will 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.” Let it never be anyone else again who is forced to abandon the Constitutional principles they vowed to uphold.

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Arianna Berg is a former SDNY (2005-2013) and NDCA (2013-2014) prosecutor.