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The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, one of the most powerful figures in US law enforcement, has quit following an order from Donald Trump’s administration to drop the corruption prosecution of New York City mayor Eric Adams.
Danielle Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor who took over as US attorney for the Southern District of New York in December in an acting capacity, resigned from the position on Thursday afternoon, according to a spokesperson for the office.
Trump’s new leadership at the Department of Justice had directed the Manhattan office to halt the prosecution of Adams, who was charged last year with accepting illegal foreign campaign contributions and doing official favours on behalf of Turkey’s government.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump said he was not involved in the decision to drop the Adams case and did not ask for it to happen. “I knew nothing about it,” he said.
Senior members of the justice department had struck an agreement with Adams’ defence lawyers to dismiss the charges in exchange for his help in enforcing Trump’s immigration priorities, Sassoon claimed in her resignation letter, which was published in US media. Sassoon termed the alleged agreement “an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case”.
The justice department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ordering the Manhattan outpost to drop the case amounted to taking away one of the most high-profile prosecutions from an office known for its independence, which handles some of the most complex terrorism, financial crime and public corruption trials in the nation.
Sassoon, a Harvard College and Yale Law School graduate who clerked for former US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, rose through the ranks over nine years in the Manhattan US attorney’s office, part of a team that secured the conviction and 25-year prison sentence of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on charges of stealing billions in assets from clients of the cryptocurrency exchange.
“By resigning, Danielle was effectively declining to follow the order,” said Joshua Naftalis, a former securities fraud prosecutor in the Manhattan US attorney’s office. “And she was sending a message that she was defending the independence of the Southern District of New York from main justice.”
A lawyer for Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The mayor had previously said: “I follow campaign rules and I follow the law.”
Jay Clayton, who led the Securities and Exchange Commission during the first Trump administration, has been nominated to lead the Manhattan prosecutor’s office but has not been confirmed by the US Senate.
Additional reporting by Steff Chávez in Washington
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