New York City Mayor Eric Adams is making a new argument in his bid to get the federal corruption charges against him dismissed, reported CBS News on Wednesday.
Specifically, Adams alleges that the leaked resignation letter of Danielle Sassoon from the U.S. attorney's office from the Southern District of New York, which alleged a quid pro quo deal between the mayor and the Trump administration to get the charges dismissed, constitutes prosecutorial misconduct that would render a fair trial impossible.
"The disclosure of this letter to the press was part of an extraordinary flurry of leaked internal Justice Department correspondence that included memoranda from the acting deputy attorney general to the Southern District and an unhinged resignation letter by one of the former line prosecutors on this case," wrote Alex Spiro, Adams' attorney. "To be sure, the Feb. 12 letter, and the decision to leak it, were last acts of desperation in defense of a meritless case that never should have been pursued in the first place."
Spiro went on to say that the leak constitutes "extreme prejudice."
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Adams was indicted last year on a number of federal corruption charges, with prosecutors alleging he accepted over $100,000 in improper gifts and travel from individuals tied to the Turkish government, at the same time he was trying to bypass fire codes to expedite approval of a new Turkish consulate building in Manhattan.
However, Trump Justice Department official Emil Bove ordered the charges dismissed; while he denied any quid pro quo in exchange, the fact that his dismissal filing argued Adams' prosecution would interfere with immigration enforcement in the city, combined with the fact Adams expressed enthusiasm about collaborating with Trump on immigration arrests and went to meet the president at his Mar-a-Lago resort, triggered speculation that Trump was dropping the charges in exchange for policy favors.
The resignation of Sassoon, a conservative Trump-installed Republican prosecutor with ties to the Federalist Society, triggered chaos at the U.S. attorney's office, with many other seasoned attorneys following her lead rather than carry out the dismissal of charges against Adams.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho, a Biden appointee, heard arguments in the motion to dismiss the charges last week. Rather than immediately grant the request, as is typical when prosecutors file such a motion, Ho instead delayed the trial indefinitely and appointed an independent counsel to present arguments against the dismissal — a potential acknowledgement the circumstances of the DOJ's request are suspicious.