The Trump Justice Department's suspected arrangement with New York City Mayor Eric Adams to drop the public corruption charges is completely illegal, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told CNN's Erin Burnett on Friday — and goes completely against how federal prosecutors are meant to behave.
"Congressman, so [DOJ official Emil] Bove finally got what he wanted, he got someone to file the dismissal of the case," said Burnett. "One of the people was himself, and the other was someone who was nearing retirement, and there was a third. But ... I'm sure you read the resignation by Mr. Scotten today saying only a fool or coward would do such a thing, and as I mentioned he had clerked for Roberts, he had clerked for Kavanaugh. What do you make about how all this went down?"
"Well, the whole episode is saturated with corruption," said Raskin. "The case itself is about the corruption of the mayor, and not only the U.S. attorney's office in New York but a grand jury in New York found that there was probable cause to bring multiple counts of criminal corruption against the mayor. So that was proceeding apace until Donald Trump made a deal with him, a corrupt bargain essentially. If you come onto my political team, we will drop these charges against you. That's extraordinary, and it's obviously illegal and it is corrupt."
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The flagrancy of that corruption, he continued, is "why you have this chain of dominoes falling after U.S. Attorney [Danielle] Sassoon, who's saying no way. This is the Scalia clerk, the Federalist Society activist, who said, this is, you know, completely corrupt and unacceptable, I won't do it. Then they got rid of the Office of Public Integrity, they got rid of the head of the Criminal Division, several others left before they found somebody willing to do it."
"Congressman let me ask you ... it was a very clear corruption case, right?" asked Burnett. "Pay to play, essentially, you know, donations in exchange for favors. And the whole allegation was that well they were going to drop the charges in that case in exchange for Mayor Eric Adams cooperating with this administration on immigration."
"I think everybody can see it was obvious, it was patent what was taking place," said Raskin. "But it's a little bit of a distraction because the real issue is that you can't say we're about to prosecute you for something, political corruption or anything else, unless you join my political team. You can't say that, whether you describe that as quid pro quo or a coercive offer or a Godfather offer. Whatever it is, you can't use criminal prosecution in that way. That's why all of these conservative lawyers are resigning en masse and they had to basically have an extortionate meeting with a whole group of career people trying to hang on to their jobs."
Watch the video below or at the link here.