Three additional federal prosecutors who worked on Mayor Eric Adams’ now-dismissed corruption case chose to resign on Tuesday rather than express regret for refusing to comply with a Trump Justice Department (DOJ) objective to dismiss the charges, according to an email they sent a top DOJ official.
The three prosecutors — Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach, and Derek Wikstrom — said they are leaving the US Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York rather than follow Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s “precondition” for keeping their posts. They said Blanche had demanded that they “admit wrongdoing” in refusing a February order from another top DOJ official — Emil Bove — to drop Adams’ charges in order to be taken off of administrative leave and return to work.
“It is now clear that one of the preconditions that you placed on our returning to the office is that we must express regret and admit wrongdoing by the office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case,” they said in the missive. “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.”
The prosecutors also charged that while both Democratic and Republican administrations they worked for understood their top priority was upholding the law, that is not the case with Trump’s second DOJ.
“The department has decided that obedience supercedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington,” they said. “This is wrong.”
The latest wave of resignations came on the same day that Trump’s newly appointed Manhattan US Attorney, Jay Clayton, took office in an interim capacity until he is confirmed by the US Senate.
With the departure of the three prosecutors, a total of 11 in both New York and Washington have now decided to step down over Bove’s order to scuttle Adams’ case.
Among those who resigned in protest were former interim SDNY US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, a Trump appointee, and former lead prosecutor on Adams’ case, Hagan Scotten.
Despite the string of departures, Trump’s DOJ succeeded in getting federal district Judge Dale Ho to rule in favor of dropping Adams’ case earlier this month. However, Ho found that there was “zero evidence” that federal prosecutors acted improperly in bringing the case against Adams, even though Trump’s DOJ used alleged prosecutorial misconduct as one of its reasons for tossing the charges.
Shortly after resigning, Sassoon sent a bombshell letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi alleging that Bove and Adams’ defense attorney, Alex Spiro, entered into a quid pro quo. She contended that Spiro exchanged Adams’ cooperation with implementing Trump’s immigration crackdown in the five boroughs for dismissing his case.
Adams, Spiro, and top DOJ officials denied that there was any such deal.
Nevertheless, Ho appeared to agree with Sassoon in his decision, writing: “Everything here smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the Indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
