By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – When Danielle Sassoon’s college newspaper asked her two decades ago for three words she would use to describe herself, the first word the future lawyer said was “independent.”
On Thursday, Sassoon demonstrated that independence when she resigned as Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor rather than comply with an order from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who forged ties with the Republican president.
Sassoon, who clerked for the late conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and is a member of the right-leaning Federalist Society, wrote in a strongly worded letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that seeking to dismiss the Adams case would violate her duty to uphold the rule of law.
“I understand my duty as a prosecutor to mean enforcing the law impartially, and that includes prosecuting a validly returned indictment regardless whether its dismissal would be politically advantageous, to the defendant or to those who appointed me,” Sassoon wrote in the letter dated February 12.
Sassoon, 38, was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on a temporary basis shortly after Trump began his second term on January 20. Trump’s permanent pick to lead the office, Jay Clayton, is awaiting U.S. Senate confirmation.
Just three weeks into her term, the February 10 directive from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss the Adams corruption case left her in what former prosecutors described as a no-win situation.
Former prosecutors said complying would have been seen as surrendering the autonomy from political influence that has long been a source of pride within the Southern District, which during Trump’s first term brought criminal charges against people in his orbit. Refusing to comply, however, made her position untenable, they added.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to charges he accepted bribes from Turkish officials, and has argued federal prosecutors during former Democratic President Joe Biden’s tenure targeted him for criticizing the administration’s immigration policies.
In ordering Sassoon to dismiss the case, Bove said it was distracting Adams from helping Trump with his crackdown on immigration. Sassoon skewered that reasoning in her letter to Bondi.
“It is a breathtaking and dangerous precedent to reward Adams’s opportunistic and shifting commitments on immigration and other policy matters with dismissal of a criminal indictment,” wrote Sassoon, who could not be reached for comment.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
‘THICKENED MY SKIN’
The granddaughter of a Jewish woman who Sassoon says fled Syria to escape violence and persecution just before the state of Israel was created in 1948, Sassoon grew up in New York before studying history and literature at Harvard, where she penned op-eds in support of Israel in the student newspaper.
After earning a law degree from Yale, Sassoon clerked for Scalia, who in 30 years on the bench became known for his passionate opposition to abortion, strong support for the death penalty, and colorful and angry dissents.
In a 2016 tribute to Scalia after his death, Sassoon said she admired the jurist’s unfiltered nature and lack of concern with being “politically correct.” She credited him with teaching her how to fire guns, and said he treated her – the only woman clerking for him that year – as “one of the gang.”
“He thickened my skin, which was the best preparation for a career in a male-dominated field,” Sassoon wrote.
She joined SDNY in 2016, and was part of the trial team that in 2022 secured the sex trafficking conviction of Lawrence Ray for coercing a group of students at his daughter’s college to engage in prostitution. Ray was sentenced to 60 years in prison and is appealing.
Sassoon is best-known for her withering cross-examination of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former cryptocurrency executive who took the stand to testify in his own defense against charges he stole $8 billion from his customers. Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He is appealing.
In her letter to Bondi, Sassoon said she and Bove attended a meeting on January 31 in which Adams’ lawyers said the mayor could only help with the Justice Department’s enforcement priorities if the indictment were dismissed. Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, on Thursday denied any “quid pro quo.”
Two days after the meeting, on February 2, she penned an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal criticizing Biden’s decision at the end of his term to commute the sentences of 2,500 drug offenders. She ended the piece on a note that now appears prescient.
“At this time of transition,” Sassoon wrote, “I look forward to doing my part to ensure that prosecutors can resume their noble work unimpeded, outside the limelight and in service of the public,” she wrote.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; editing by Amy Stevens and Stephen Coates)
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