Hello and welcome to the details of No ‘fool’: Another New York prosecutor quits over order to nix mayor graft case and now with the details
Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Several high-ranking members of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, which handles corruption cases, have also resigned this week after refusing to dismiss the indictment of Adams. — Pic by AFP
NEW YORK, Feb 15 — A top prosecutor who brought corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams resigned yesterday, saying only a “fool” or a “coward” would comply with a Trump Justice Department demand to drop the case.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, is the latest federal prosecutor to quit this week in protest over the extraordinary request.
Scotten’s boss, Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney, submitted her resignation to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday after being asked to drop the case against Adams.
Several high-ranking members of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, which handles corruption cases, have also resigned this week after refusing to dismiss the indictment of Adams.
Pressure has been mounting on the Democratic mayor to resign or for New York Governor Kathy Hochul to remove him as leader of the largest city in the United States.
Adams has denied allegations he asked the administration to drop the corruption case against him in exchange for enforcing Republican President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
“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,” he said, adding that it was time to “put this difficult episode behind us.”
Speaking to reporters at a White House event yesterday, Trump said he knew “nothing about the individual case” but that it looked to be “very political” coming ahead of Adams’s November re-election bid.
The president also said the federal prosecutors who resigned were “mostly people from the previous administration” who were “going to all be gone and dismissed.”
Sassoon, the acting US attorney, is a Republican and was actually appointed by Trump to the position while his permanent nominee awaits Senate confirmation.
A graduate of Yale Law School and a member of the conservative Federalist Society, Sassoon led the 2023 prosecution of disgraced crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried.
Scotten, a decorated US Army veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, was a former clerk to conservative US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
‘Unbelievably unprecedented’
In asking for the charges against Adams to be dropped, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said the prosecution was restricting the mayor’s “ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime.”
Scotten, in a blistering resignation email to Bove, said the reasons given for dismissing the indictment did not pass scrutiny.
“No system of 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,” Scotten said.
“Our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials,” he said.
“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 said. “But it was never going to be me.”
The first sitting New York mayor to be criminally indicted, Adams pleaded not guilty in September to charges of fraud and bribery and has claimed he was being punished for his criticism of then-president Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
Hochul, the New York governor, in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday, denounced the Justice Department’s interference in the Adams case, calling it “unbelievably unprecedented.”
“The Bondi administration in that Department of Justice is already showing they’re corrupt,” she said.
Asked if she would remove Adams as mayor, Hochul said: “The allegations are extremely concerning and serious, but I cannot, as the governor of this state, have a knee-jerk, politically motivated reaction.”
The Justice Department, which Trump has accused of unjustly prosecuting him, has been the target of a sweeping shakeup since the Republican took office, and a number of high-ranking officials have been fired, demoted or reassigned.
Among those sacked were members of the office of special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two now-abandoned criminal cases against Trump. — AFP
These were the details of the news No ‘fool’: Another New York prosecutor quits over order to nix mayor graft case for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at Malay Mail and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
