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Lining Up the Fools
Feb. 15th, 2025 10:00 pmOne of the stories from this week that's very significant (objectively Watergate-level) is the Trump administration's attempt to corrupt the criminal case against NYC Mayor Eric Adams to help the Trump administration to help him / influence him to further their immigration policy goals. Adams is facing federal bribery charges. After Trump's election, Adams started cozying up to Trump and there was speculation he was angling for a pardon or other legal interference. That certainly seemed possible in line with the GOP's current position on political corruption (they're for it). After all, Trump commuted the sentence of Democratic (at the time) Governor Rob Blagojevich for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat in 2020 (and pardoned him in 2025 because commutation was somehow not enough).
Trump did not pardon Adams, though. Instead, Emil Bove (former Trump attorney, now deputy US AG) ordered Danielle Sassoon, acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to drop the case in a way that can be reconsidered after Adams runs for reelection this fall. A pardon could be done unilaterally and would definitely be a completely legal abuse of the pardon power, under the current ruling that there's no abuse of the pardon power for which any President could be found criminally liable. Instead, they've decided to do things in a more complicated and probably illegal way, which has the advantage of keeping the threat of prosecution dangling over Adams, in case they need both carrot and stick.
Sassoon escalated the issue to the new AG in a pre-resignation letter that points out that a judge still needs to agree to the dismissal and might object to something obviously so pretextual, and also accuses Bove fairly directly of agreeing to an explicit quid pro quo with Adams and trying to cover that up. AUSA Hagen Scotten also resigned with this excellent letter that gets to be shorter by agreeing with Sassoon's earlier one, and better by dispensing with the "if you're not willing to reconsider".
Scotten's letter concludes, "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. 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. But it was never going to be me." A good approach to take if someone is trying to get you to do something foolish and illegal. Even if someone else will do it eventually, it doesn't have to be you.
Bove eventually did file the motion along with Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon*. It's not clear what Judge Dale Ho will do when faced with such an obviously pretextual motion. There's not a lot a judge can do to force a prosecutor to prosecute, but there may be people at the DOJ he'd like to at least question about it. Relevant bar associations may take an interest as well.
(* There's an interesting Cleveland connection here as well.)
Trump did not pardon Adams, though. Instead, Emil Bove (former Trump attorney, now deputy US AG) ordered Danielle Sassoon, acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to drop the case in a way that can be reconsidered after Adams runs for reelection this fall. A pardon could be done unilaterally and would definitely be a completely legal abuse of the pardon power, under the current ruling that there's no abuse of the pardon power for which any President could be found criminally liable. Instead, they've decided to do things in a more complicated and probably illegal way, which has the advantage of keeping the threat of prosecution dangling over Adams, in case they need both carrot and stick.
Sassoon escalated the issue to the new AG in a pre-resignation letter that points out that a judge still needs to agree to the dismissal and might object to something obviously so pretextual, and also accuses Bove fairly directly of agreeing to an explicit quid pro quo with Adams and trying to cover that up. AUSA Hagen Scotten also resigned with this excellent letter that gets to be shorter by agreeing with Sassoon's earlier one, and better by dispensing with the "if you're not willing to reconsider".
Scotten's letter concludes, "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. 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. But it was never going to be me." A good approach to take if someone is trying to get you to do something foolish and illegal. Even if someone else will do it eventually, it doesn't have to be you.
Bove eventually did file the motion along with Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon*. It's not clear what Judge Dale Ho will do when faced with such an obviously pretextual motion. There's not a lot a judge can do to force a prosecutor to prosecute, but there may be people at the DOJ he'd like to at least question about it. Relevant bar associations may take an interest as well.
(* There's an interesting Cleveland connection here as well.)
