Sassoon stepped down after receiving the order, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY has confirmed.
A U.S. attorney who just resigned said she refused to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams because she felt the motivation for stopping the prosecution was improper.
“Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations,” Danielle Sassoon, a Republican who was acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) at the time, wrote in a Feb. 12 letter.
Prosecutors in 2024, while President Joe Biden was still in office, charged Adams, a Democrat, with accepting illegal campaign contributions.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered Sassoon on Feb. 10 to drop the charges because, he said, the timing of the charges and statements made by the prosecutor who brought them could unfairly prejudice jurors.
He also said prosecuting Adams would distract the mayor from helping crack down on illegal immigrants, a priority of the Trump administration.
Sassoon stepped down after receiving the order, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the SDNY has confirmed.
In the letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, which was disclosed after the resignation announcement, Sassoon said that she refused to comply with the order from Bove, one of her superiors.
“I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially, and that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those who appointed me,” Sassoon wrote.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” she added later.
The U.S. Department of Justice did not respond to requests for comment.
Sassoon became the acting U.S. attorney for the SDNY shortly after Trump took office on Jan. 20. Former U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who resigned after Trump won the 2024 election, charged Adams.
Bove told Sassoon on Thursday that he accepted her resignation.
