The lead prosecutor in the criminal investigation against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has officially stepped down from the case and has left a scathing resignation letter on his way out.
He becomes the seventh attorney to quit over the case.
As reported by the New York Times, former United States Attorney Hagan Scotten, who had previously clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, sent a letter to acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove in which he defiantly slapped down any notion that he would ever sign off on demands to dismiss charges against the New York mayor.
Scotten begins his letter by calling the Department of Justice's primary justification for dismissing the case against Adams as "so weak as to be transparently pretextual."
He then went on to directly accuse the Trump administration of offer a corrupt quid-pro-quo arrangement in which it would agree to drop charges against Adams in exchange for him doing political favors for the administration.
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"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," he argued.
He closed his letter by delivering a scathing assessment of the ethics of the lawyers currently serving in the Trump administration.
"Any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way," Scotten wrote. "If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expected you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."
Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, a conservative Republican installed by Trump himself, became the first to resign over the Adams order Thursday, and was swiftly followed by another two prosecutors. An expert called it the "Thursday afternoon massacre."
