LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Mass resignations are shaking up the U.S. Justice Department.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Three senior prosecutors, along with three others, have quit after they were directed to drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. The episode amplifies concerns about whether politics is influencing decisions at the Trump Department of Justice.
FADEL: NPR's Carrie Johnson is following the story, and she's here now to talk about it. Good morning, Carrie.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: OK, so who exactly quit their jobs at the Justice Department, and what drove them to quit?
JOHNSON: The acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan resigned after she faced a lot of pressure to drop a case against Democrat Eric Adams, the New York City mayor. Danielle Sassoon had only been on the job for about three weeks, but she had a strong record of prosecuting major defendants. She wrote a letter to DOJ saying there was really no good reason to dismiss the Eric Adams case, and in fact, prosecutors were going to add a new charge of obstruction against him for allegedly destroying evidence. She wrote that she attended a meeting with Adams' lawyers and a senior justice department leader in late January. And at that meeting, the defense lawyers for Adam said, he would help DOJ with its tough immigration enforcement campaign if they dropped criminal charges against him. Sasson wrote, that sounded an awful lot like an unlawful quid pro quo, and the DOJ leader in the meeting admonished one of her team members for taking notes and wanted those notes after the meeting ended. Eric Adams committed crimes, she wrote, and there's no good faith way to walk away from that case.
FADEL: I mean, if this is true, what they're saying, it sounds like it sets a dangerous precedent. But what is the Justice Department in Washington saying about all this?
JOHNSON: For now, nothing. But Emil Bove, one of Donald Trump's former defense lawyers and the second in command at the DOJ right now, he wrote that Danielle Sassoon had been insubordinate. He was in that meeting with Adams' lawyer, and he says he was worried about those notes because of leaks to the media. He placed two other prosecutors in the Adams case on administrative leave while they undergo an investigation by their own justice department. NPR has learned one of those prosecutors won two bronze stars in the military, and that he clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.
FADEL: Now, Carrie, you're reporting multiple resignations. Who else left over this decision to drop the case?
JOHNSON: This mess spread beyond New York City and into Justice Department headquarters in Washington. Because the prosecutors in New York refused to back away from the Adams case, Emil Bove transferred it to the Public Integrity Unit at Main Justice here in D.C. Two senior lawyers quit - Kevin Driscoll and John Keller. Late yesterday, three more attorneys in D.C. quit, too. A former senior Justice Department official told me, this is by far the worst thing we've seen from the Trump Justice Department so far, and that's a high bar.
FADEL: And is there any response from New York's mayor, Eric Adams?
JOHNSON: Adams has pleaded not guilty to all these corruption charges. He's been spending time with President Trump. And he says the Biden Justice Department went after him because he criticized Biden on immigration, but the prosecutors in New York started investigating Eric Adams long before that happened. When reporters asked Trump about all this last night, Trump said he didn't personally request the case be dropped, and he didn't know anything about it.
FADEL: And where do things go from here, Carrie?
JOHNSON: So far, the charges against Adams have not been dropped. So if senior leaders at DOJ want to do that, they're going to have to do it themselves or find someone else who will agree. We're only three weeks into this new era at the Justice Department. We've seen so many firings of the people who prosecuted Trump - firings of prosecuted defendants in the Capitol riot and FBI agents suing their bosses at the Justice Department. This is really unheard of activity at the DOJ.
FADEL: NPR's Carrie Johnson. Thank you, Carrie.
JOHNSON: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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