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Another top NY federal prosecutor resigns rather than junk Mayor Adams’ corruption case
By
Liam Quigley
Published Feb 14, 2025
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Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
By
Liam Quigley
Published Feb 14, 2025
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Another top prosecutor who was leading the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams has stepped down, according to a widely distributed letter on Friday.
Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, tendered his resignation in a four-paragraph letter accusing President Donald Trump's Department of Justice of attacking the rule of law. It follows top prosecutor Danielle Sassoon's resignation on Thursday, which also came after the DOJ ordered the case against Adams to be dropped.
“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion," Scotten wrote. "But it was never going to be me."
Scotten's resignation is the latest in the fallout following the DOJ’s move to dismiss charges against Adams.
Like Sassoon, Scotten has a conservative pedigree; he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. He also served in the U.S. Army in Iraq, winning two Bronze Stars before attending Harvard Law School.
In her own resignation letter, Sassoon expressed confidence in Adams' guilt, and criticized the DOJ for trying to "bargain" with the mayor.
Both Sassoon and Scotten were highly critical of holding the threat of prosecution over anyone, never mind an elected official, to advance a policy agenda. Adams’ attorneys reportedly offered a quid pro quo agreement which would gain the federal government the mayor’s assistance with carrying out immigration enforcement in exchange for tabling the prosecution.
“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,” Scotten wrote.
The mayors' lawyers denied there was ever a quid pro quo.
On Friday morning, Adams appeared on "Fox & Friends" alongside Trump's border czar Tom Homan, who appeared to threaten the mayor if he didn't cooperate closely with the federal government's ongoing immigration crackdown.
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment on the resignation letter.
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courts
new york city
Politics
Mayor Eric Adams
Liam Quigley
Liam Quigley is a reporter covering parks & sanitation for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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