Republican federal prosecutor for Manhattan quits after being ordered to drop charges against Mayor Eric Adams

The acting U.S. attorney for Manhattan resigned from her job Thursday after she was ordered to drop the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Danielle Sassoon, a Republican who was appointed to be the acting head of the Southern District of New York by President Donald Trump weeks ago, notified her office three days after she failed to act in accordance with a memo from the Justice Department requesting prosecutors drop the charges.

Two other individuals in the office also resigned, five people familiar with the matter told the New York Times.

It comes after Emil Bove III, a Trump ally and the number two in the Justice Department, directed the office to drop the corruption and bribery charges against the mayor. Bove said the decision was not made based on the strength of the case, rather Adams was needed to support Trump’s policy objectives, such as cracking down on immigration.

However, Sassoon supported the case against Adams that accused the mayor of unlawfully accepting more than $100,000 in benefits from the Turkish government in exchange for helping expedite the Turkish consulate building in Manhattan and accepting campaign donations through an illegal “straw donor” scheme.

“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically- elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General,” Bove wrote in an email to Sassoon in which he accepted her resignation.

The Independent has reached out to federal prosecutor’s office for comment.

“Moments ago, I submitted my resignation to the attorney general,” Sassoon wrote in the email obtained by the Times. “As I told her, it has been my greatest honor to represent the United States and to pursue justice as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.”

The resignation of Sassoon and two others raise questions about the ability of federal prosecutors to pursue cases that may conflict with the president’s agenda.

For months, rumors swirled about Adams trying to work out a deal with the Trump administration to have his case dismissed or the charges dropped.

Despite coming from opposite political parties, Adams had begun cozying up to Trump and his allies – finding common ground over the president’s harsh anti-immigration policies.

The mayor broke from his party’s typical criticisms of Trump and praised the president’s anti-immigration agenda, believing it would benefit New York City which has seen a surge in the number of migrants. Adams previously said the city did not have the resources to support the influx and criticized the Biden administration for not providing him with federal support.

Trump later said he would consider pardoning Adams.

Bove added that in addition to accepting Sassoon’s resignation, the prosecutors who worked on Adams’ case would be placed on administrative leave and be investigated by the attorney general.

He added that Sassoon’s “conduct” would also be investigated.

Sassoon, 38, had established herself in SDNY as an ambitious and intelligent attorney who holds traditional conservative values.

She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2008 and Yale Law School in 2011. She clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia before joining Manhattan prosecutor’s, in 2016, as an assistant US attorney.

Sassoon was part of the team that prosecuted Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Bankman-Fried was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison last year. She also helped prosecute Lawerence Grecco, the man convicted of sex trafficking for abusing students of Sarah Lawrence College and starting what became known as a “sex cult.” He was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 2023.

As a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal organization, Sassoon was connected to notable Republicans though never directly to the president.

She was tapped to lead the New York prosecutor’s office temporarily until Trump’s pick, Jay Clayton, was confirmed by the Senate.