Two top-tier prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and five officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section opted to abruptly leave their jobs in the span of about 24 hours instead of complying with acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s order to drop Adams’s charges.

“I think that this is a great blow to the DOJ’s reputation,” former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told the Washington Examiner.

A trio of conservative legal analysts, Ed Whelan, Dan McLaughlin, and Andy McCarthy, raised similarly critical views.

“[Trump’s] subordinates tried to cloak this raw political gesture in legally palatable raiments. But the rationale offered was incoherent. Now that it has predictably blown up, they blame the people who wouldn’t play along. To say that’s not going to work is an understatement,” wrote McCarthy, who worked as an SDNY prosecutor for nearly two decades.

McLaughlin called the dismissal of Adams’s charges “galactically stupid & dangerous policy” on the part of the Trump administration, while Whelan wrote that the spate of resignations “will best end with Emil Bove’s.”

Adams’s indictment and Bove’s demand

SDNY brought an indictment against Adams, a Democrat and former Brooklyn Borough president, last year alleging he accepted illegal campaign donations and luxury international travel from foreign businesspeople and a Turkish government official. He used his political power to offer them “favorable treatment” in return, the indictment said.

As mayor, Adams was outwardly sympathetic to Republicans’ tough-on-crime stance. After Trump won his election, the president revealed he was weighing pardoning Adams, who had become an unlikely ally. Trump’s DOJ ultimately ordered SDNY to drop Adams’s charges.

Bove wrote in his directive to acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon that he did not question the merits of the case. Instead, Bove said, the charges must be dropped because former U.S. Attorney Damien Williams had spoken out of line about the case and Adams might not be able to do his job as mayor while enduring court proceedings.

“His letter directing Sassoon to drop the case does not stand up to the light of day,” former U.S. Attorney John Fishwick told the Washington Examiner.

The fallout

After days of silence, the resignations came swiftly beginning Thursday.

Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, both of whom attended Ivy league law schools and clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices, quit their jobs instead of abiding by the order to dismiss Adams’s case. Sassoon, who was appointed by Trump as the acting head of SDNY in January, is a member of the Federalist Society, and Scotten is a Special Forces veteran and Bronze Star recipient.

They excoriated Bove in their resignation letters, which each appeared in the New York Times.

Sassoon revealed in hers that during a private meeting she attended, Adams’s attorney allegedly offered the Trump administration a “quid pro quo” in which Adams would collaborate with Trump on tackling illegal immigration in exchange for Trump dropping his charges. Scotten said he understood how Trump, as a businessman, would want to seek a “dismissal-with-leverage” but that it was unlawful.

“I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me,” Scotten said.

Bove then turned to the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section to carry out the deed, but the No. 1 and 2 career officials there also responded by quitting, according to CNN. Bove summoned three more prosecutors in the Public Integrity Section, who were reportedly out at a bar toasting to their colleagues’ resignations, and asked them on a video call to dismiss Adams’s case. They all quit their jobs on the spot and returned to the bar, the outlet reported.

The Public Integrity Section is “the repository for the institutional experience and filter on which cases are meritorious to bring and which aren’t,” Wu said. “That’s really what’s being gutted here.”

Adams denies ‘quid pro quo’

Late Friday, a court document revealed that DOJ leadership had found two willing lawyers, Antoinette Bacon and Edward Sullivan, to agree to file the motion to dismiss Adams’s case. Bove himself also signed the motion.

“The decision to dismiss the indictment of Eric Adams is yet another indication that this DOJ will return to its core function of prosecuting dangerous criminals, not pursuing politically motivated witch hunts,” Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle said Friday in a statement.

Mizelle said the prosecutors who “refused to follow a direct command” had “no place at DOJ.”

Trump said from the Oval Office, “I know that they didn’t feel it was much of a case.” The president denied having any involvement in the decision to drop Adams’s charges.

On Friday morning, Adams and border czar Tom Homan appeared together on Fox & Friends for a joint interview, in which they relayed a jovial and enthusiastic plan for immigration reform. Adams denied leveraging his indictment.

“Imagine [my lawyer] going inside saying that the only way Mayor Adams is going to assist in immigration, which I was calling for since 2022, is if you drop the charges. That’s quid pro quo. That’s a crime,” Adams said.

Adams added, “Come on. This is silly.”