The prosecutor who resigned after refusing to drop the case of Adams says he is confident that “he committed the crimes.”

NEW YORK – The main federal prosecutor in Manhattan resigned on Thursday after rejecting a Order of the Department of Justice drop corruption charges against the mayor of New York City Eric Adams. Before quitting smoking, Danielle Sassoon He told President Donald Trump’s new attorney general that he had “confidence” that Adams had committed crimes.

Two senior officials of the Department of Justice also resigned after the leadership of the department moved to take control of the case. The attorney general’s attorney general, Trump’s former personal lawyer Emil Bove, who had ordered the Adams to withdraw, said in a letter Accepting Sassoon’s resignation that the Department of Justice in Washington would present a motion to remove the charges and “more focus” of the Democratic mayor.

Sassoon, a Republican who serves as an interim prosecutor of the United States for the Southern District of New York, announced his resignation in an email to his staff. The measure, confirmed by an office spokesman, occurred after a day confrontation between Manhattan prosecutor and his superiors in Washington.

The duel letters of the officials in New York and Washington exposed in clearly personal language the seriousness of a dispute over low heat and behind the scene about the management of one of the most significant current public corruption cases of the government. The result not only threatens to create an irrevocable fissure in the relationship between the department’s headquarters and its most prestigious fiscal offices, but also runs the risk of strengthening the perception that the Trump administration will use a transactional approach to application decisions of the law.

“I remain bewildered by the haste and superficial process by which this decision was reached,” Sassoon wrote on Wednesday in a letter to the United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi, a copy that was obtained by Associated Press. Sassoon urged Bondi to reconsider the directive to the directive. The Adams case drops.

With Sassoon, refusing to comply with the Trump administration order, the Department of Public Integrity was asked to take care of the case, according to a person familiar with the matter. Two senior officials who supervise the unit, including the interim boss, resigned in response, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel issues.

The outputs occurred days after Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to end the case against Adams, who was accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and free travel bribes or with a discount of people who wanted to buy their influence. He declared himself innocent.

Bove said in a memorandum on Monday that the case must be dismissed so that Adams can help the repression of immigration of President Donald Trump and Reelection campaign free to face criminal charges. Primary is four months away and Adams has multiple challengers.

Bove scolded Sassoon in a letter accepting his resignation. He wrote that she was “unable to just and impartially review the circumstances of this prosecution.” Bove said he would open internal investigations on his “conduct” and that of prosecutors who worked in the case of Adam.

Bove had ordered Sassoon to drop the case of Adams as soon as it is “practicable”, but there have been no public statements or actions of the prosecution team. On Wednesday, Bondi said he would “Look” why the case had not yet dismissed. Until Thursday afternoon, the charges remained in place.

In his letter to Bondi, Sassoon accused Adams lawyers of offering repeatedly and explicitly what was equivalent to a “Quid Pro quo” during a meeting with the justice department last month. She wrote that the lawyers had offered the mayor’s help with the priorities of application of the immigration of the Trump administration if the case were dismissed.

“It is an impressive and dangerous precedent rewarding the Adams opportunistic and changing commitments about immigration and other political issues with the dismissal of a criminal accusation,” Sassoon wrote. She calls the alleged offer “an inadequate offer of immigration application assistance in exchange for a dismissal of her case.”

In an email, Adams’s lawyer Alex Spiro said that the accusation of a quid pro quo was a “total lie.”

“We did not offer anything and the department did not ask us anything about us,” said Spiro. “They asked us if the case had any relationship with national security and the application of immigration and, honestly, we replied that.”

The Department’s decision to end the Adams case due to political considerations, instead of the force or weakness of the evidence, alarmed some career prosecutors who said it was a deviation from long -standing norms.

Bove’s directive was even more notable because Bove had been a prosecutor and supervisor for a long time in the South District and because department leaders are historically reluctant to intervene in cases where charges have been presented.

The Bove Memorandum also moved away from any legal basis for dismissal despite the decades of the department of the department by issuing that collection decisions must be guided by facts, evidence and law.

Sassoon, a former employee of the late judge of the United States Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, was not the prosecutor who presented the case against Adams last year. That was the then American lawyer Damian Williams, who resigned after Trump’s electoral victory in November.

Sassoon had only been used to serve as a US prosecutor on January 21, the day after Trump assumed the position.

His role was intended to be temporary. In November, Trump nominated Jay Clayton, former president of the United States Stock Exchange and Securities Commission, for the position, an appointment that must be confirmed by the Senate. That has not yet happened.

The Southern District of New York is among the offices of larger and more prominent prosecutors in the United States, with a long history of addressing the embezzlement of Wall Street, political corruption and international terrorism. He has a tradition of independence from Washington, something that has won the nickname of “The Sovereign District”.

This is the second fight of the Department of Justice in five years among Washington and New York officials to result in a dramatic leadership billing.

In 2020, William Barr, who served as one of Trump’s general prosecutors during his first term, expelled Geoffrey Berman, the United States prosecutor in Manhattan, in a night surprise announcement. Berman initially refused to give up his position, creating a brief confrontation with Barr, but he did it after the assurance that his investigations on Trump allies would not be disturbed.

Adams was accused In September, for charges that, although he worked as president of the Brooklyn County, he accepted more than $ 100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and luxurious travel advantages, such as expensive flight improvements, luxury hotels stays and even a trip to A bath house.

The accusation said that a Turkish official who helped facilitate trips leaned on Adams by favors, including asking him to press the Fire Department to let a diplomatic building with newly built 36 floors open on time for a visit planned by the president of Turkey.

The prosecutors said they had evidence that Adams personally ordered the political assistants to request foreign donations and disguise them to help the campaign to qualify for a city program that provides a generous and publicly financed party for small donations in dollars. According to Federal Law, foreign citizens are prohibited from contributing to US electoral campaigns.

As recently as on January 6, prosecutors had indicated that their investigation remained active, writing in judicial documents that continued “discovering additional criminal conduct from Adams.”

Bove said in his memorandum that the officials of the Department of Justice in Washington had not evaluated the evidence in the case before deciding that it should be withdrawn, at least until after the elections of the Mayor’s Office arrived in November.

But he criticized the “recent public actions” of Williams that said he had “threatened the integrity of the procedures, even by increasing prior advertising to the harmful pretrial.” Williams has not talked publicly about the Adams case since his resignation, but wrote an editorial who denounced corruption in politics.

Federal agents had also been investigating other Adams assistants. It was not clear what will happen to that side of the probe. __

Richer and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Jake Offenhartz and Michael R. Sisak contributed to this report.