NEW YORK — A former Watergate prosecutor on Monday urged the federal judge presiding over the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to assign a special counsel to help decide how to handle the Justice Department’s request to drop charges.
Attorney Nathaniel Akerman told Judge Dale E. Ho in a letter filed in the case record in Manhattan federal court that he sought to intervene because nobody was representing the public’s interest after three attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington made the request Friday.
He urged the judge to reject the dismissal request, saying the court could look into how the Justice Department reached its decision and could require Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who first directed prosecutors to drop the case, to appear in court and explain his position.
Finally, the judge might appoint an independent special prosecutor to continue the case with access to grand jury materials and other evidence, Akerman said. He filed his letter as a lawyer for Common Cause, a nonpartisan advocacy group for U.S. elections integrity.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to charges that while in his prior role as Brooklyn borough president, he accepted over $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks from a Turkish official and business leaders seeking to buy his influence.
Akerman’s request came after an unusual public fight between Bove, the second-in-command of the Justice Department, and two top New York federal prosecutors: interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who led the Adams prosecution.
On Thursday, Sassoon resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. A day later, Scotten resigned, noting that Sassoon had properly resisted a demand that the charges be dropped and the possibility they could be reinstated after this year’s election.
“No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives,” he wrote.
On Monday, Adams — amid calls to resign by some Democrats — confirmed that four of his top deputies had decided to resign in the fallout from the Justice Department’s push to end the corruption case against him and ensure his cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In his letter to Ho, Akerman echoed Sassoon’s assertion that the Justice Department had accepted a request by Adams’ lawyers for a “quid pro quo” — his help on immigration enforcement in exchange for dropping the case. She called it a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”
Akerman wrote that there was “overwhelming evidence from DOJ’s own internal documents showing that the dismissal of the Adams indictment is not in the public interest and is part of a corrupt quid pro quo between Mayor Adams and the Trump administration.”
He said the internal documents show that in return for dismissal of the indictment, Adams agreed to improperly assist the Trump administration with immigration enforcement.
Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro said Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was a “total lie.”
When he directed Sassoon to drop the charges a week ago, Bove said the mayor of America’s largest city was needed to assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown and the dismissal of charges could enable Adams to campaign for reelection against multiple opponents unencumbered by criminal charges.
