‘Totally inappropriate’: Former prosecutors slam DOJ’s handling of Eric Adams case

MANHATTAN (CN) — The Department of Justice’s relentless pursuit of dismissal of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ federal corruption case has already led to the resignations of seven prosecutors, including acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon.

The ordeal continues to furrow the brows of legal scholars, many of whom see the situation as a clear quid pro quo in which Adams — in exchange for the dismissal of his bribery charges — would assist the Trump administration with its immigration enforcement efforts in New York City.

Adams’ joint appearance on “Fox and Friends” Friday alongside border czar Tom Homan didn’t do much to quell those concerns. In the roughly 15-minute interview, Adams announced his plans to bring ICE agents to the city’s infamous Rikers Island jail, and Homan vowed to hold him to it.

“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt saying, ‘Where the hell is this agreement we came to?’” Homan said.

Those words from Homan sounded like a threat to Juliet Sorensen, a former federal prosecutor and a clinical law professor at Loyola University Chicago.

“He actually says he would go up Adams’ butt,” Sorensen told Courthouse News on Friday. “So in addition to that being crass and undignified … that’s a threat. That’s a threat by a political appointee of the federal government towards the mayor of the largest city in the United States.”

The Justice Department on Monday instructed federal prosecutors to drop the case against Adams, who was being charged in a sprawling corruption scheme in connection with foreign contributions to his mayoral campaigns. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove penned the letter directing the case’s dismissal, and claimed that the prosecution has “unduly restricted” Adams’ ability to tackle the immigration crisis in New York City.

But Sassoon and six other prosecutors refused — including the case’s lead prosecutor Hagan Scotten, who stepped down on Friday.

“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,” Scotten wrote in his resignation letter to Bove.

Sorensen said that she would have done the same thing.

“There’s ample evidence against Mr. Adams,” Sorenson said. “The federal government appears to be dangling the possibility of dismissing these charges without prejudice, so you have that sort of damocles hanging over the head of Eric Adams to bring those charges back in order to induce him to cooperate with this administration’s policy objectives. And it’s highly improper.”

Bove told federal prosecutors that they could reevaluate Adams’ case after the November 2025 mayoral election, meaning that the ball is still in the federal government’s court when it comes to the future of the mayor’s criminal charges.

“It’s completely inappropriate,” David Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor and criminal law professor at Stanford University, told Courthouse News on Friday.

“It’s totally inappropriate and a gross abuse of prosecutorial power to dangle prosecution over an elected official’s head in an effort to coerce the official to take policy positions that you want that official to take,” Sklansky said. “I mean, this is an administration that says it’s against the weaponization of the Justice Department. But if that’s not weaponization, I don’t know what is.”

Sklansky said that he, too, would have resigned if pressed with the same choice that faced Sassoon and Scotten.

“They don’t get paid as much as they would be paid in the private sector,” Sklansky said. “And they don’t sacrifice the higher pay they could receive so that they can just be a mouthpiece for whatever outrageous position somebody high up in the Department of Justice tells them to mouth in court.”

“I think that it would be wrong to go into court and try to defend this decision, so I understand the decision that they made, and I think it’s the same decision I would make,” he added.

Bove filed a motion to dismiss the case on Friday evening, but U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, a Joe Biden appointee who is overseeing the case against Adams, still needs to approve its dismissal to make it official. Ho will have the opportunity to press prosecutors about their decision to drop the case. If he were to deny their dismissal motion, the judge would find himself in the unlikely position of having a pending criminal case with no willing prosecutor.

“That would be most unusual,” Sorensen said.

Adams continues to deny any unsavory collusion with the Trump administration. After his appearance on “Fox and Friends” Friday, he issued the following statement:

“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. I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers that I represent and I will always put this city first. Now, we must put this difficult episode behind us so that trust can be restored, New York can move forward, and we can continue delivering for the people of this city.”

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