(WASHINGTON) — Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, submitted her resignation Thursday, according to a source familiar with the move. Multiple members of the office where the case was to be reassigned have resigned as well.
Sassoon sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi informing her of her decision to resign.
Sassoon’s resignation followed days of tension between the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and leaders in the Justice Department over the bribery and campaign finance case against Mayor Eric Adams.
On Jan. 31, Sassoon was drawn into a conversation at DOJ headquarters in Washington about the future of the case. The meeting included the mayor’s defense attorney, Alex Spiro.
On Monday, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove sent a memo that told Sassoon, “You are directed, as authorized by the Attorney General, to dismiss the pending charges in United States v. Adams.”
To date, the office has not filed a motion to dismiss with the court.
The failure to immediately heed the directive irked DOJ leadership, including Bove and Bondi.
“That case should be dropped. It was dead at the directive of Emil so that case should be dropped,” Bondi told reporters on Wednesday.
The Justice Department planned to remove the prosecutors handling the mayor’s case and reassign it to the Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C. However, as soon the Public Integrity Section was informed it would be taking over, John Keller, the acting head of the unit, and his boss, Kevin Driscoll, the senior most career official in the criminal division resigned, according to multiple sources.
It is now unclear who will take over the Adams case and how soon it might be dropped, the sources said.
Adams had pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment that accused him of accepting years of luxury travel gifts in exchange for, among other things, persuading the fire department to approve the opening of the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite the lingering safety concerns of inspectors.
In a letter to the Southern District of New York on Monday, Bove questioned the timing of when the charges were brought, suggesting the case was part of the Biden administration’s weaponization of the Justice Department, according to sources at the time.
Bove also said the case adversely affected Adams’ ability to help the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, the sources added.
Federal prosecutors were instructed to dismiss the case without prejudice, meaning it could come up again. However, Bove wrote nothing could happen until after this year’s mayoral election.
Despite that threat, Spiro expressed confidence Adams would not be prosecuted.
“There is no looming threat,” Spiro said at a press conference Wednesday. “This case is over.”
Any motion to dismiss the case would have to be formally filed in court and reviewed by the judge.
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