Trump’s Lawyers Burn Down DOJ In Bonfire Of Corruption

The Justice Department has fallen, and we can’t even blame Elon Musk and his band of incel code bros. This assault comes thanks to President Trump’s personal lawyer, Emil Bove, the dead-eyed villain currently occupying the chair of deputy attorney general.

On Monday, Bove directed the Southern District of New York to dismiss the bribery and corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. He called the timing of the prosecution — seven months before the primary — political retribution by the Biden administration for Adams’s critiques of his fellow Democrat’s immigration policies. He added that “the pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration” and instructed the acting US Attorney for SDNY to dismiss the case without prejudice so that it could be revisited after the November election.

And then for several days nothing happened. Or at least nothing happened on the docket besides a couple of sealed filings related to classified evidence.

Then yesterday Danielle Sassoon, the acting USA, resigned rather than carry out Bove’s order.

In a scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, also a former personal lawyer of the president, she described an explicit quid pro quo in which the DOJ agreed to dismiss the charges in exchange for Adams’s abrogating New York’s sanctuary city policies, which were enacted by statute in 2014.

This is clearly an abdication of both the rules of professional conduct and the Justice Department manual:

Federal prosecutors may not consider a potential defendant’s “political associations, activities, or beliefs.” Id. § 9-27.260; see also Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598, 608 (1985) (politically motivated prosecutions violate the Constitution). If a criminal prosecution cannot be used to punish political activity, it likewise cannot be used to induce or coerce such activity. Threatening criminal prosecution even to gain an advantage in civil litigation is considered misconduct for an attorney. See, e.g., D.C. Bar Ethics Opinion 339; ABA Criminal Justice Standard 3-1.6 (“A prosecutor should not use other improper considerations, such as partisan or political or personal considerations, in exercising prosecutorial discretion.”). In your words, “the Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct.” Dismissal of the indictment for no other reason than to influence Adams’s mayoral decision-making would be all three.

The Times reports that Adams, who is represented by Elon Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, has wooed Trump since the election. And Sassoon’s letter paints a picture of Bove going around the prosecution team and working to keep the corrupt bargain secret

I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams’s counsel, and members of my office. Adams’s attorneys 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. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion.

In a positively unhinged letter to Sassoon, Bove accused her of professional misconduct and insubordination.

“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General,” he raged, accusing the prosecutor of “endanger[ing] the lives of millions of New Yorkers” by refusing to agree to the deal.

“It is not for local federal officials such as yourself, who lack access to all relevant information, to question these judgments within the Justice Department’s chain of command,” he fulminated, adding that “In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President, and anyone romanticizing that behavior does a disservice to the nature of this work and the public’s perception of our efforts.”

Bove placed Sassoon’s deputies on administrative leave with no access to their office or email, promised to investigate everyone involved in this “insubordination,” and removed the case to Main Justice.

The edict was clear: Prosecutions are a political tool, and anyone who objects will be professionally destroyed.

But it would appear that more than one lawyer was willing to take the risk. Yesterday at least five other attorneys resigned rather than carry out Bove’s order, including John Keller, the acting head of the Public Integrity Section, and Kevin Driscoll, the head of the Criminal Division. As of this writing, there appears to be no one willing to put their name on the Rule 48 motion.

Meanwhile, Adams has suddenly decided that it’s fine, actually, for ICE to set up shop at Rikers Island.

And while Spiro immediately released a statement calling Sassoon’s allegations “a total lie,” his client was on Fox with Trump’s official Rage Uncle Tom Homan confirming it.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has gone from treating prosecutorial independence as at least nominally sacrosanct to openly deriding it as insubordination worthy of termination.

W(h)ither democracy.

United States v. ADAMS [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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