Another Adams prosecutor quits, challenges Bove to find a ‘fool’ to drop case

Another prosecutor in the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) has quit in light of the Justice Department directing the charges against him be dropped, daring Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to find a “fool” to do it. 

A letter from former Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten to Bove, obtained by The New York Times, challenged Bove’s justifications for dropping the case. Bove didn’t address the strength of the case but rather argued it “improperly interfered” with Adams’s 2025 reelection campaign and “unduly restricted” Adams’s ability to focus on illegal immigration and violent crime. 

Scotten, who has led the probe into Adams from the beginning in 2021, said he can understand a chief executive who has a background in business and politics viewing the “dismissal-with-leverage” as a good deal, but any assistant U.S. attorney knows U.S. laws and traditions “do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.” 

“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.” 

Scotten is just the latest official to resign from office over the directive from Bove on Monday to drop the case. Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon stepped down from her position Thursday, saying she could not make the arguments that Bove made in good faith. 

She also accused Adams’s attorneys of “repeatedly” pushing for “what amounted to a quid pro quo” in which Adams would receive leniency in exchange for assisting with the government’s immigration priorities, a claim Adams denied. 

Several other prosecutors have also resigned from their positions over the decision on Adams. 

Bove in his directive also alluded to claims of weaponization of the justice system under the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, who oversaw the case and stepped down from his office shortly before Trump’s term began. 

Scotten said the justification that Williams’s involvement in the case “somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence” is “so weak as to be transparently pretextual.” And he said the other justification about Adams’s ability to enforce the law is worse. 

“No system of ordered 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,” he said.

Bove requested the charges be dropped without prejudice, meaning they can be refiled at a future date. 

Adams has been facing five counts in his corruption trial. The indictment against him accused him of seeking and accepting bribes from wealthy businesspeople and a Turkish government official in exchange for favors. 

Speculation swirled that Adams may receive a pardon from Trump or that the case may be dropped as Adams increased his ties to the president. Adams has consistently maintained his innocence and claimed he was the victim of politically motivated charges for criticizing the Biden administration’s policies on immigration.