Eric Adams Pits the 'Sovereign District of New York' against Trump's DOJ

A slew of resignations sent tremors through Washington, D.C., this week, when more than half a dozen federal prosecutors quit over the Justice Department's directive to drop federal bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Why It Matters

The sudden exodus has put the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York—long known as the "Sovereign District of New York" because of its fierce independence—at the forefront of a brewing battle between President Donald Trump's political appointees at the DOJ and career federal prosecutors.

What To Know

At least seven prosecutors, including the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), resigned rather than obey the DOJ's order, which was issued by acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.

Danielle Sassoon, former acting head of the SDNY, submitted her resignation in a two-line letter Thursday. Then, after the Justice Department moved the case from SDNY to the federal public corruption unit in Washington, D.C., five prosecutors in that office, including its top two officials, John Keller and Kevin O. Driscoll, resigned.

The officials' decisions to quit rather than follow Bove's order put into sharp focus the tension between the president's political objectives and career prosecutors' pledge to enforce the law "without fear or favor," as Sassoon wrote in an earlier letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi expressing concerns about the decision to drop the charges against Adams.

The resignations were all the more noteworthy given that they came from people with glowing conservative credentials, some of whom, like Sassoon, were handpicked for the job by Trump himself. Before she was a prosecutor, Sassoon clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a legal giant among conservative constitutional scholars.

Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney at SDNY who became the seventh official to resign on Friday, was far more scathing than his boss in his resignation letter.

"I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal," Scotten wrote, referring to the DOJ's decision to drop the Adams case so that he could assist Trump on immigration.

"But any assistant U.S. 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 wrote.

"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 wrote. "But it was never going to be me."

Scotten, like Sassoon, has a background as a law clerk and previously clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and then-Washington, D.C., Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who now sits on the Supreme Court.

'No One's Safe'

Some officials within the department fear the worst has yet to come and the Adams case being dropped is just the tip of the iceberg.

"If the Southern District, of all offices, is in this position, no one's safe," said one Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of professional retaliation.

A former FBI agent echoed that view, telling Crooked Media's "What A Day" that the fallout from Trump's second term will "take decades to undo once he's gone."

"It's a failure of the legislative branch for confirming his cabinet, a failure of the judicial branch for allowing him to run for president again and for keeping him from being prosecuted, and what we're getting from that is the executive branch running away with the whole country," they said. "It's difficult to watch."

Newsweek reached out to a Justice Department spokesperson via email on Friday.

Other observers pointed out the unusual nature of the fight between Trump's DOJ officials and the Southern District, given that it centers around the Democratic mayor of one of the most liberal cities in the country.

Bove ordered that the case be dismissed after Adams' defense lawyers met with top DOJ officials shortly after Trump took office. The New York mayor also personally traveled to Mar-a-Lago and met with Trump in Florida before he was inaugurated.

"The Trump Department of Justice is picking a fight with its own lawyers, not for some longstanding desire of the president's heart nor over some important point of constitutional interpretation, but to keep an official of the rival party, with no obvious political future, in office for a very short amount of time," New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote.

Sassoon raised concerns in her letter to Bondi about the circumstances surrounding the decision to drop the Adams case, saying the mayor's lawyers had "repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed."

One of Adams' lawyers, Alex Spiro, told reporters in an earlier statement that "the idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us."

"We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement, and we truthfully answered it did," he said.

Trump's DOJ may also be shooting itself in the foot by choosing this particular hill to die on.

Many of the legal battles the Trump administration is waging "are fights it should be able to win," Douthat wrote. "But only with good arguments and effective counsel, not with a cavalcade of hacks filing its briefs."

What People Are Saying

Ed Whelan, Antonin Scalia chair in constitutional studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, praised Scotten's resignation letter, writing: "Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor in New York City mayor Eric Adams's criminal case, already had an amazing set of achievements ... He should now get a prize for Awesome Resignation Letter."

"Somehow I doubt that Bove's blunderbuss will put the Department of Justice in good stead with Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, or any other justice."

James Surowiecki, who contributes to The Atlantic, wrote on X: "Hagan Scotten served three tours of duty as a Special Forces officer in Iraq, won two Bronze Stars, then came home, went to Harvard Law, and clerked for John Roberts. And we're losing him as a federal prosecutor because Trump wanted to cut a deal with Eric Adams. Travesty."

What Happens Next

Sassoon's deputy, Matthew Podolsky, became acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan after Sassoon resigned. Podolsky will run the office while Jay Clayton, Trump's pick for U.S. attorney for the SDNY, goes through the Senate confirmation process.

The Justice Department also formally filed legal documents Friday evening requesting that the charges against Adams be dismissed.