Three high -ranking civil servants from the US Ministry of Justice, including the Supreme Civil Prosecutor of Manhattan, resigned on Thursday, instead of fulfilling the command to reject corruption allegations against the Mayor of New York City, as from one of Reuters and this matter familiar Memo from Reuters and People executed.
The descents mark a sign of resistance from civil servants from the Ministry of Justice against the efforts of US President Donald Trump to revise the agency to end what he describes his weapon against political opponents. Critics say that Trump’s changes threaten to subject criminal persecution of political moods.
The US lawyer of Manhattan, Danielle Sasso, the recent election of the Trump government, temporarily leading the office, which is pursuing the New York Mayor Eric Adams, according to the memorandum of General Prosecutor Emil Bove, a Trump -Herenen, returned.
BOVE had instructed Sassoon to relieve the case on Monday in which legal experts from Trump administration officers were asserted by the public prosecutor who has long proud of independence from politics. Adams, a democrat, has closed the relationships with Trump, a Republican.
In his Thursday memo, Bove wrote that Sassoon had refused to correspond to what he described as the knowledge of his office that the case against Adam’s “weapons” of the judicial system was issued.
“Your office has no authority to deny gun research,” wrote Bove, Trump’s former lawyer for personal criminal lawyers. “The Ministry of Justice will not tolerate insubordination.”
Bove wrote that the two main procedures would place on vacation in the case of the Adam. He also said his office would take over Adam’s case and turn to dismiss, although no formal application for dismissal had been submitted on Thursday afternoon.
A spokesman for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) confirmed the resignation of Sassoon. It was not immediately clear who would take their place.
According to a person who was informed in this matter, Sassoon refused to meet the Directive for the dismissal of the case, the Trump administration, John Keller, the incumbent head of the public corruption unit of the Ministry of Justice.
Keller also resigned on Thursday, two people who were familiar with the matter. Kevin Driscoll, a high -ranking civil servant in the department’s department, has also resigned, said one of the people.
An official of the Ministry of Justice confirmed the resignations.
The mayor of New York City and the former NYPD officer Eric Adams were charged with five federal offers in connection with allegations that he took over illegal campaign contributions and bribes from foreign nationals in exchange for favors.
Compare with ‘Saturday evening -massacre’
Since Trump began his second term in the White House on January 20, the new government dismissed more than a dozen prosecutors who were sentenced to criminal charges against Trump in 2023, and ended some FBI officials and prosecutors, the cases against On January 6, 2021, his supporters pursued the US Capitol to prevent the Congress from certifying his loss of election.
In her first day in the workplace, the US general Prosecutor Pam Bondi published a guideline last week in which the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice, who reject it to appear in court, or sign signings are disciplined and possibly released.
The resignation triggered comparisons of right -wing experts with the “Saturday evening massacre” in 1973, as civil servants of the high -ranking Ministry of Justice, the Watergate complex in Washington.
Juliet Sorensen, a former public prosecutor who teaches the Chicago School of Law at Loyola University, also said that the resignation of Trump’s decision in his first term in office, James Comey, director of the FBI, James Comey To examine 2016 presidential campaign.
“In these two historical cases, as with today’s events, they have extreme political pressure due to their high office against the non -political department for Ministry of Justice due to their high office,” said Sorensen.
Half a dozen of former Sdny prosecutors, Reuters announced this week that the arrangement of Bove, even a former Sdny prosecutor, raised questions about whether the office could remain independent of political pressure during Trump’s second term.
Last September, Sasso’s predecessor Damian Williams – A Biden -Lannen – Adams accused Adams of accepting bribes from Turkish officials.
Adams did not think and argued that the indictment was raised as a retaliation for his criticism of bidens immigration policy. Trump, whose two national cases were released after his election victory, but who was convicted of a separate indictment at the state level, has expressed sympathy for Adams. When Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said that he had not applied for the Ministry of Justice against Adams.
