The Justice Division’s order to toss Mayor Eric Adams’ felony case — whereas leaving the choice open of resurrecting it after November — is a “serious mistake” that retains Hizzoner beholden to President Trump, the lead prosecutor on the case wrote in a scathing resignation letter Friday.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant US Lawyer within the Southern District of New York, railed that solely a “fool” or “coward” would adjust to the DOJ’s directive to dismiss the bribery, corruption and different prices in opposition to Adams as a result of it hampered his potential to assist with Trump’s immigration agenda.
“Any assistant US attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way,” Scotten fumed.
“If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” he added.
“But it was never going to be me.”
Scotten blasted Trump DOJ’s “dismissal-with-leverage” proposal — admittedly made with out contemplating how sturdy the proof is that Adams took Turkish bribes — as an illegal ploy to pressure the mayor to adjust to Trump’s immigration agenda.
“No 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,” he wrote within the one-page missive.
The prosecutor and veteran, who three fight excursions in Iraq as a U.S. Military Particular Forces Officer, added that he might perceive how Trump, “whose background is in business and politics, might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal” — however that the DOJ attorneys ought to know higher.
Scotten’s blistering memo got here the day after the interim Manhattan US Lawyer, Danielle Sassoon, a Republican and former clerk for US Supreme Court docket Justice Antonin Scalia, resigned slightly than obey the orders to drop the case.
In her personal blistering resignation letter, Sassoon accused Adams of agreeing to comply with Trump’s immigration orders as a part of a “quid pro quo” deal to get his case being dropped.
Trump’s Performing DOJ No.2, Emil Bove, fired again together with his personal letter by which he claimed that the Adams case had been “politicized” and that prosecuting the mayor for taking bribes and unlawful marketing campaign contributions was “directly endangering the lives of millions of New Yorkers.”
“As a result of the pending prosecution, Mayor Adams is unable to communicate directly and candidly with City officials he is responsible for managing, as well as federal agencies trying to protect the public from national security threats and violent crime,” he wrote, as he accepted Sassoon’s resignation.
Scotten was one in every of 4 prosecutors on the case positioned on administrative depart Thursday, based on Bove, who mentioned they had been being investigated by the US Lawyer Common’s workplace in an inside probe that would result in their “termination.”
Adams has pleaded not responsible to prices that he took $123,000 in journey perks from Turkish nationals in alternate for fast-tracking the opening of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan.
