Four more officials have resigned from the Department of Justice (DOJ) over the handling of the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, bringing the total number of resignations to seven. One of the resigning prosecutors, Hagan Scotten, made his exit in a scathing letter directed at Emil Bove, a top DOJ official, accusing the department of pressuring prosecutors to drop the case under questionable justifications.
Scotten, who had been the lead prosecutor in the case against Adams, did not mince words in his resignation letter. “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” he wrote. “But it was never going to be me.” His resignation follows that of acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who stepped down on Thursday in protest over Bove’s order to dismiss the case. Within hours, five other top prosecutors at the DOJ followed suit, resigning rather than comply with the controversial order.
In his letter, Scotten took aim at Bove’s reasoning for seeking to drop the charges, specifically pointing to Bove’s claims that the case was tainted by comments from former U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and that it was interfering with Adams’ ability to cooperate with the federal government on immigration issues. Scotten dismissed these arguments as “weak” and “transparently pretextual.”
“The first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys—is so weak as to be transparently pretextual,” Scotten wrote.
He also rejected Bove’s second reason, which suggested that dropping the charges would allow Adams to better focus on his duties, including immigration enforcement and his 2025 reelection campaign. Scotten strongly disagreed, saying: “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.”
Scotten’s resignation adds to a growing list of DOJ officials who have voiced their outrage over the handling of the Adams case. He pointed to the troubling nature of using prosecutorial power to sway elected officials, even drawing a comparison to how a business-minded political leader like former President Donald Trump might view such a deal as acceptable.
“I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful deal,” Scotten wrote. “But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.”
Scotten, a Harvard Law School graduate and former U.S. Army Special Forces officer, also served as a clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. His experience in the legal and military fields has made him a respected figure in the DOJ. However, his deep commitment to legal ethics ultimately led him to resign when asked to follow through on an order he believed to be fundamentally flawed.
Read Scotten’s entire letter below:
The DOJ’s attempt to dismiss the charges against Adams was initiated after Bove, citing concerns about the case interfering with the mayor’s duties, issued the order. In response, the DOJ placed Scotten and another prosecutor on administrative leave and indicated that they would be investigated by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
Mayor Eric Adams, who has pleaded not guilty to five federal charges, continues to face a cloud of legal uncertainty. At present, the Justice Department has not yet filed the motion to dismiss the case, but the resignation of several top prosecutors has raised serious concerns about the integrity of the decision-making process behind it.
