NEW YORK (AP) – The best federal public prosecutor in Manhattan resigned on Thursday instead of an order of the Ministry of Justice to obey the charges of corruption against mayor of New York City Eric Adams.
The resignation of Danielle Sassoon, a Republican who was the Interim -Marican lawyer for the southern district of New York, was confirmed by a spokesperson for the office.
Her resignation came days after a senior official from the Ministry of Justice New York Commissioners ordered the case to fall against Adams, who was accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and bribes of free or discounts from people who wanted to buy his influence.
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Acting deputy attorney General Emil Bove said in a memo on Monday that the case should be rejected so that Adams, a Democrat, could help with President Donald Trump's performance and campaign for re -election.
Officials from the Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comments. Alex Spiro, Alex Spiro from Adams, not either. A spokesperson for the mayor did not respond immediately.
The decision of the Ministry of Justice to end the case for political considerations, instead of the power or weakness of the evidence, some career supply alerted that it was a deviation of long -term standards.
Although Bove had appointed that the case was rejected as quickly as 'practically as possible', days passed without public statements or actions from the prosecution team in New York.
The American attorney -general Pam Bondi said on Wednesday that she would “investigate” why the charges still had to be rejected.
Sassoon, a former servant for the deceased American Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, who is a member of the Conservative Federalist Society, was not the one who brought the case against Adams last year. The public prosecutor who did that, former American lawyer Damian Williams, resigned after Trump's election victory.
Sassoon was only tapped to serve on January 21 as acting US Attorney, the day after Trump took over.
Her role was intended as temporary. In November, Trump nominated Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, for the position, an appointment that must be confirmed by the Senate.
The office she led, the southern district of New York, is one of the largest and most prominent offices of the public prosecutor in the US, with a long track record to tackle Wall Street Malfeasance, political corruption and international terrorism .
It has a tradition of independence from Washington, something that has earned the nickname 'The Sovereign District'.
During the first term of Trump, the office continued both the personal lawyer of the president, Michael Cohen, and his strategic adviser, Steve Bannon, in separate cases. Cohen argued guilty of tax evasion and campaign funding costs. Trump ended the federal fraud case against Bannon by forgiving him, although almost identical charges were subsequently established by officers of Justice.
Sassoon joined the office of the American lawyers in 2016. In 2023 she helped the fraud persecution of Sam Bankman-Gefruurde, founder of the Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX in Leiden. More recently, she had the co-chef of the criminal appeal office.
Adams was accused in September that, although he worked as president of Brooklyn Borough, more than $ 100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lush travel benefits such as expensive flights, luxury hotel enclosures and even accepted a trip to a bathhouse.
The indictment said that a Turkish official who helped facilitating the trips and then leaned on Adams for favors, including him to lobby the fire brigade to leave a new 36 -storey diplomatic building open on time for one Planned visit by the president of Turkey.
The prosecutors said they had the evidence that Adams personally ordered political assistants to ask for foreign donations and to hide them to help the campaign qualify for a city program that offers a generous competition -funded competition for donations with small dollars . According to federal legislation, foreign nationals may be prohibited in contributions to American election campaigns.
Recently on January 6, public prosecutors had indicated that their investigation remained active and wrote in judicial articles that they “continued to discover extra criminal behavior by Adams.”
Bove said in his memo that officials from the Ministry of Justice in Washington had not evaluated the evidence in the case before the decision that it should be dropped – at least until after the mayor's election in November.
But he criticized “recent public actions” by Williams that he said “had threatened the integrity of the procedure, also by increasing pre -judging pretial publicity.” Since his resignation, Williams has not publicly spoke about the Adams case, but wrote an editorial corruption in politics.
Federal agents had also investigated other senior adams assistants. It was unclear what will happen with that side of the probe.
