Were President Donald Trump to have pardoned New York City mayor Eric Adams, we would have understood. By the same token, were the Justice Department to announce that the case against Adams was too weak, and to call for prosecutors to dismiss the charges, we would be supportive.
That is to say, there are prudent and imprudent ways to achieve similar ends, and in the case of Eric Adams, the Trump Justice Department has chosen the latter.
At the same time that the Justice Department launched its “Weaponization Working Group,” acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove ordered prosecutors to drop the case against Adams, conceding in a memo that his decision had nothing to do with “the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based.” Rather, he argued, the Adams prosecution was politically motivated on the part of the Biden administration and hampered the mayor’s ability to enforce federal immigration laws.
But Bove ordered the charges against Adams dismissed without prejudice, allowing the Justice Department to bring them again at a later date if it so chooses—and granting the department leverage over Adams. Since then, Trump administration officials like Tom Homan have spoken openly about striking a deal with Adams on immigration enforcement in New York City, pledging to get “up his butt” if he reneges.
Striking a political deal with Adams as the Justice Department launches the Weaponization Working Group gets a righteous endeavor off on the wrong foot and risks undermining it completely.
That seems to be what Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was getting at when she told Bove in her resignation letter that she could not “credibly represent the Government before the courts” if she sought to “dismiss the Adams case on this record.”
She has been pilloried by some on the right not on the merits of her decision but as an aspiring #Resistance figure whose seemingly conservative credentials—clerkships for Judge Harvie Wilkinson and Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia—are a mirage masking an inner trans activist. Yet, unlike some of the #Resistance celebrities—say, a certain cohost of The View or a former Pence aide turned featured speaker at the Democratic National Convention—Sassoon hasn’t done a single interview since she resigned last week. We’re guessing that’s not because the press hasn’t been calling.
We think the record shows she would have been a powerful ally for the president, as would her colleague Hagan Scotten, who followed her out the door. Success, for this administration, will depend in part on not setting its most capable allies up to fail.
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