Bulwark Takes - DOJ Faces Mass Resignations Over Eric Adams’ Prosecution Freeze

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Ryan Goodman, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security, to discuss the resignations at the Southern District of New York as charges against Mayor Eric Adams are to be dropped.

Hey guys, Sam Stein here again, managing out at the Bulwark, joined by Ryan Goodman of Just Security. We're going to be talking about some pretty remarkable developments that happened this afternoon at the Manhattan's U.S. Attorney's Office. What the hell is happening at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District? This is wild stuff. Can you sort of summarize quickly what we know? Yeah, so just this afternoon, it's almost like a Thursday afternoon massacre. The acting U.S. attorney of the Southern District of New York has resigned because she is refusing the main justice pressure and order to drop the case against Eric Adams. Along with her, her prosecutorial team has been put on leave because they supported her view

and her approach. Then the acting deputy attorney general tried to transfer the case to Maine Justice to have them drop the case against Mayor Adams. And two of the most senior people in the Justice Department have also resigned, refusing to follow through on that order. Okay. Let's stop for a second. Daniel Sassoon is the acting U.S. attorney, or was the acting U.S. attorney at the Southern District. She was there on a sort of temporary basis because Trump had fired the serving U.S. attorney and his appointee, Jay Clayton, has been waiting for Senate confirmation. So already, Daniel Sassoon was in this kind of weird limbo place. It's also worth noting she is a conservative. I mean, she went up to the Federal Society.

She clerked for Antonin Scalia. Her conservative credentials are pretty evident. Her famous case was that she prosecuted Sam Bigman Freed, the crypto case. But she's not like, you know, this is not someone who's in the resistance. Let's just put it that way. And then the other thing that people should know is that the Adams case, Trump administration has just decided they want to drop the case and they've done it for fairly overtly political reasons. They say that Adams is both running for reelection, which is true, but also they feel like he's been impeded from executing on President Trump's immigration policies because he's facing this prosecution. So that's the backdrop here. Have you ever seen anything like this? It's sort of rhetorical. Yeah. Under Nixon, you know, it's like, you know, trying to fire the special counsel.

It's unbelievable. Right. So and when you say that they've been explicit about it, it is in writing. That is actually Beauvais' letter to Sassoon. And we'll stop. Emile Beauvais's letter to Sassoon that the- And we'll stop. Emile Beauvais is the current serving deputy attorney general. Yes. Who until recently was the defense counsel for Donald Trump. Right. Yeah. So his letter to Sassoon saying drop the case against Adams is just extraordinary how explicit it is because it in fact says, this is not us making an assessment of the strength of the case.

It is just the two reasons you gave, which is, that's, you never say that part out loud, even if you have it quietly, and you shouldn't have it quietly as a justification. It's no legal basis to do this. Why doesn't Bove just take the case himself and drop it? I think he might next. I think he's trying to avoid being the person that does it, but it sounds as though he might be the one who goes into court.

So essentially, it's a hot potato. No one wants to be the person who said, oh, I dropped the prosecution of Mayor Adams under pressure because you ruin what? You basically just kill your credibility, right? Yeah. And I actually think this is that very point of, this is the time you resign. You cannot do it. Like, forget even what the public knows about it. You cannot do it. It's a completely illegitimate basis that the mayor is helping them on immigration policy is the reason that they're going to drop a righteous case against him. Right.

So a self-respecting lawyer can't do it. And maybe, as you say, like their bar license might also be on the line were they to follow through on it, too, and their credibility for their bar license, you think? Oh, yeah. I think it would be deeply unethical what's being asked of them. And now the person who is left carrying that baton is in some jeopardy because it's now very public and understood that what's being asked of them to do is who is actually left carrying the baton here oh maybe bove it's unclear to me where i think i think he said it's i think he said it's going to be sassoon's replacement but we're not entirely sure if that's going to go through right he has to find to find somebody. And if he doesn't find somebody, I don't know what he does. Let's talk a little bit

about the Southern District. It's heralded. It's kind of its own beast, really. I mean, there's obviously U.S. attorneys across the country, but Southern District is sort of the biggest and the baddest and known as the sovereign district,

frankly. Talk a little bit about that office in the history here and why this is, you know, why Sassoon is in this place. Yeah, so it's one of the most coveted positions to be in as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, highly regarded across the country. And like you said, sometimes referred to as the Sovereign District of New York, because it has a bit of an independence. But this is not just about the independence of the Southern District, since Bove tried to get people in his own main justice back in D.C. to do it, and they won't do it either, and they've resigned. But this is a case

that was being brought by the Southern District of New York that is a powerful case. And if anything, the signs were that they were ratcheting up, that the criminal investigation of Mayor Adams wasn't just at its end point with this indictment, that there were going to potentially be additional charges. And the other thing I just want to mention is that in the Beauvais letter, when he says that it might also interfere with the mayor's campaign for reelection, there is a 60-day rule that the Justice Department doesn't bring indictments. But we're not close to that. We know we're close to that. We know we're close to that. We know we're close to that even in the primary, let alone the general.

Well, and they dismissed it without prejudice, right? So they could theoretically bring it back up, but that's almost like a guillotine above Mayor Adams' head, right? It's like do what we want or this can come back is essentially how I read it. I completely read it the exact same way. It's extortionist in a sense. And they drop a note to say that's not what we're doing, which is kind of funny because it's like, why do you feel you need to drop the note? Exactly.

Because without prejudice means they could reinstitute the charges. So there he is in the bind of needing to kind of bend towards the Trump administration's immigration policy, which he had already started to do and signal that very strongly. You know, I'm remembering still when he met with Tom Homan, then Tom Homan goes on a kind of a one hour infomercial with Dr. Phil right after the meeting saying this was just a great meeting with the mayor. I want to replicate it across the country. So, you know, it is what it is. It's very clear what's happening. All right. Last question. So they try to kick it to the public integrity section of the DOJ, which is hilarious to make the public integrity section drop the charges, the very clear charges against the very allegedly corrupt mayor. If you're in the DOJ now, I guess it's hard to put your mind in

the DOJ, although you know people there and I know people there who are obviously toiling with what to do, right? I mean, do they stick it out? Do they go? And that's not just pertinent to the Mayor Adams case, but this certainly adds to that already very difficult decision-making process that the personnel have within DOJ and elsewhere. Yeah, it's a very hard choice. And it's a very subjective choice. I do think the choice of staying to fight the fight and try to uphold the rule of law is, you know, that can easily be the right one to make. And then the problem is when you are personally given the order to carry

out something unethical, that's when the person maybe says that's the red line. But otherwise, I'm going to try to stick this out to try to keep the rule of law together as much as possible, given that the senior leadership of the Justice Department seems to be acting so deeply unethically. And this is not the instance for Beauvais. There are others that are accumulating. And the assumption is here that Sassoon got to that red line. It's just like she I mean, she'd been putting it off, putting it off, putting it off. And they haven't dropped the case, even though the instructions had come. And then eventually she's just like, I can't do it.

Yes. And I think something we can all watch for is the court hearing, because they actually have to go in a court and say to the judge that they want to drop the case. It's almost unheard of to think that the judge would say, no, you're forced to prosecute this case, DOJ. Could the judge in theory try to assign it to a different body? That's a great question. There are instances in which a court could try an independent prosecutor, but that's very unusual. But this is the most unusual situation that we're dealing with. Yeah, we're in unusual times. I couldn't see it, but you can make the intellectual case that the case is there.

It's strong and give it to an independent prosecutor, but it likely will not happen. All right, Ryan, I think we should have a rating, you and I, where it's like, you know, which is the craziest issue we've talked about or like put it on like a one ten scale and just sort of like because it's just going to get crazier. So I'm going to give this one like a seven point eight. OK. I was a little bit above an eight. You're above an eight. I will close pretty close to like average at an eight. All right. All right. Cool. Seven point eight. OK, cool.

Ryan Goodman, thank you so much, man. Everyone, thank you for tuning in. Really appreciate it.