'I want no part of this political bargain': Eric Adams' prosecutor urged to shred notes
WASHINGTON – A senior official in the Justice Department told a federal prosecutor to shred the notes of a meeting with New York Mayor Eric Adams’ defense team, according to a trove of documents released in the criminal case Tuesday.
The department leadership's decision to drop corruption charges against Adams sparked the resignations of at least seven prosecutors amid accusations that the Trump administration took the action in exchange for the mayor cooperating on immigration enforcement. Adams and administration officials denied the allegation.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho is weighing the request to drop the charges.
Adams had pleaded not guilty to charges he took bribes from Turkish officials in exchange for political favors.
Dropping charges a 'political bargain': prosecutor's draft email
Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, was one of the prosecutors who resigned over Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s direction to dismiss the charges.
“I want no part of this political bargain,” Sassoon wrote in a previously unreleased email to herself Feb. 11 that was part of the document release Tuesday.
In another newly-released document, a draft letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Sassoon wrote that Bove directed one of her staffers to shred his notes after meeting with Adams’ defense team.
“The nature of the discussion to date have also been alarming,” Sassoon wrote in the undated draft letter. “Mr. Bove directed a member of my team to shred his notes after our meeting with defense counsel.”
Bove denies directing the shredding of documents
A previous release of Sassoon’s final letter to Bondi said Bove “directed the collection” of notes from the Jan. 31 meeting with prosecutors and defense lawyers, but not the potential shredding.
Bove, who is now the principal associate deputy attorney general, denied telling anyone to shred documents.
“The former Acting United States Attorney made a series of inaccurate claims in a submission to the Attorney General of the United States, and her misrepresentations in that letter are partly why we find ourselves where we do with respect to the Adams prosecution," Bove said in a statement. "There were many people present in that meeting, and at no time did the PADAG direct the shredding of any material.”
The dispute between Sassoon and Bove was previously known.
In her resignation letter Feb. 12 – two days after Bove directed her to drop the charges – Sassoon said his reasons for “dismissing the indictment are not ones I can in good faith defend as in the public interest and as consistent with the principles of impartiality and fairness that guide my decision-making.”
Bove had had directed the charges to be dismissed because of the timing coinciding with Adams running for reelection and because the case distracted him from cooperating on immigration enforcement.