Danielle Sassoon, Manhattan Federal Prosecutor, Quits After Adams Case Is Ordered Dropped

Manhattan’s acting U.S. attorney resigned on Thursday after the Justice Department ordered her to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

The resignation of the U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, came amid questions about the independence of federal prosecutors under President Trump just weeks into his second term.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately comment. An official with the Justice Department in Washington declined to comment.

Ms. Sassoon, who had supported the case against Mr. Adams, notified her office of her decision in a brief email at about 2 p.m. The office has not filed a motion to dismiss the case.

“Moments ago, I submitted my resignation to the attorney general,” she wrote in the email, the text of which was provided to The New York 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.”

She continued: “It has been a privilege to be your colleague, and I will be watching with pride as you continue your service to the United States.”

It was not immediately clear who would replace her, but typically, it would be the office’s No. 2 official, the deputy U.S. attorney, a role currently held by Matthew Podolsky.

On Monday, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official in Washington, Emil Bove III, directed Ms. Sassoon to drop the case. He wrote that officials in Washington had reached their decision without assessing the strength of the evidence against Mr. Adams or the legal theories on which the case was based, issues “on which we defer to the U.S. attorney’s office at this time,” Mr. Bove said.

The Trump administration last month named Ms. Sassoon, a veteran prosecutor, to head the office on an interim basis while Mr. Trump’s choice for the job, Jay Clayton, awaited Senate confirmation.

Ms. Sassoon was immediately swept into conversations with Justice Department officials about the criminal case against Mr. Adams.

Mr. Adams was indicted last year on five counts, including bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, stemming from an investigation that began in 2021. Mr. Adams had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled for trial in April.

But Mr. Bove directed Ms. Sassoon to dismiss the case and to cease all further investigative steps against Mr. Adams until a review could be conducted by the Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney, presumably Mr. Clayton, after the mayoral election in November.

The Southern District has long been viewed as the nation’s most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office, handling complex and often high-profile cases involving Wall Street, national security and public corruption.

Although the office is part of the Justice Department — there are 93 U.S. attorney’s offices around the country — the Southern District has a reputation for guarding its independence and fending off interference from Washington, winning it the nickname “the Sovereign District.”

Ms. Sassoon, 38, joined the Southern District in 2016. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, she clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group.

Ms. Sassoon is best known for the successful fraud prosecution and 2023 conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who received 25 years in prison. She also prosecuted Lawrence V. Ray, who was convicted in 2022 of extortion and sex trafficking related to his abuse of Sarah Lawrence College students. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

In 2023, Ms. Sassoon was named co-chief of the Southern District’s criminal appeals unit, the position she held when she was promoted last month to interim U.S. attorney.

Mr. Bove in his order to drop the case said that the directive “in no way calls into question the integrity and efforts” of the prosecutors working on the case, nor Ms. Sassoon’s efforts in leading them.

Mr. Bove said that the dismissal of charges was necessary because the indictment “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources” to President Trump’s immigration crackdown and had “improperly interfered” with Mr. Adams’s re-election campaign.

The memo criticized the timing of the charges and “more recent public actions” of Damian Williams, the former U.S. attorney who brought the case, which Mr. Bove said had “threatened the integrity” of the proceedings by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity that could taint potential witnesses and jurors.

Mr. Bove’s reference appeared to be to an article Mr. Williams wrote last month, after leaving office, in which he said New York City was “being led with a broken ethical compass.”

The indictment against Mr. Adams was announced in September by Mr. Williams, who led the office during the Biden administration. Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has claimed that he was targeted because of his criticism of the administration over the influx of more than 200,000 migrants into the city — an assertion the Southern District has rebutted, noting that the investigation began well before the mayor made those comments.

Mr. Adams has praised parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, visited him near his Mar-a-Lago compound and attended his inauguration a few days later. The two men did not discuss a pardon, but Mr. Trump spoke about a “weaponized” Justice Department, The New York Times reported.

Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.