Folks?
Felon President Donald Trump ‘Owns’ the US Dept. of Justice…..
THAT JUST IS….
Wait?
This one could go South on Trump & Co….
(Not Trump…But Trump’s lawyer from his criminal cases)
There are reorts that lawyers in the Justice Dept. broke the law in handling evidence…
The Felon President NOW says he did NOT ask thta Adam’s charges be dropped?
Hmmmm?
Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.
Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
Several hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned, according to people familiar with the developments.
The serial resignations represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department. They were a stunning repudiation of the administration’s attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams.
The departures of the U.S. attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, and the officials who oversaw the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Kevin O. Driscoll and John Keller, came in rapid succession on Thursday. Days earlier, the acting No. 2 official at the Justice Department, Emil Bove III, had ordered Manhattan prosecutors to drop the case against Mr. Adams.
The agency’s justification for dropping the case was explicitly political; Mr. Bove had argued that the investigation would prevent Mr. Adams from fully cooperating with Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Bove made a point of saying that Washington officials had not evaluated the strength of the evidence or the legal theory behind the case.
Ms. Sassoon, in a remarkable letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, said that Mr. Bove’s order to dismiss the case was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts.”….
…
Ms. Sassoon also wrote that her office had proposed a superseding indictment against the mayor that would have added a charge of conspiracy to obstruct justice. The charge, she wrote, would have been “based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the F.B.I.” It would also have included additional accusations about his “participation in a straw donor scheme.”
…
Mr. Bove accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation in his own eight-page letter on Thursday, in which he blasted her handling of the case and decision to disobey his order.
He told her the prosecutors who had worked on the case against Mr. Adams were being placed on administrative leave because they, too, were unwilling to obey his order.
He said they would be investigated by the attorney general and the Justice Department’s internal investigative arm. He also told Ms. Sassoon both bodies would evaluate her conduct….
…
But the internal investigations ordered by Mr. Bove could prove risky for him. Officials will be likely to review Mr. Bove’s conduct as well, and the judge overseeing the case could demand answers from Justice Department officials in Washington.
Matthew Podolsky, who had been Ms. Sassoon’s deputy, is now the acting U.S. attorney, a spokesman for the office said Thursday evening.
Mr. Bove’s letter offered a window into a dispute that has been raging between the Justice Department officials in Washington and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, out of sight of the public.
On Thursday afternoon, according to a pool report, Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he had not asked for the case against Mr. Adams to be dropped.
But Mr. Bove’s letter made explicit that he believed Mr. Trump — whom he formerly served as his criminal defense lawyer — held sway over the Justice Department, which for decades has operated at a remove from the White House…
….
“In no valid sense do you uphold the Constitution by disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President,” he wrote to Ms. Sassoon, “and anyone romanticizing that behavior does a disservice to the nature of this work and the public’s perception of our efforts.”
He wrote he had accepted Ms. Sassoon’s resignation “based on your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”
Until recently, Mr. Bove was one of Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers, representing him in his New York State criminal trial last year. The trial led to Mr. Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that had threatened to derail his 2016 campaign.
The Southern District of New York, the prosecutor’s office Ms. Sassoon led until Thursday, has long been viewed as the nation’s most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office. It has a reputation for guarding its independence and fending off interference from Washington, winning it the nickname “the Sovereign District.”…
…
The commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, whose staff worked on the case against the mayor, said in a statement that her agency had “conducted its work apolitically, guided solely by the facts and the law.”
The commissioner, Jocelyn E. Strauber, also underscored that the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss the case was unrelated to the evidence.
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.
Then, on Monday, Mr. Bove directed Ms. Sassoon to dismiss the case. She was also told 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….
…
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.
Mr. Trump had criticized Mr. Adams’s prosecution, saying the mayor had been “treated pretty unfairly,” and had floated the possibility of a pardon….
Note….
Could the New York Attorney General pick up the Adams Case …or would that be double jeopardy ?
…
*Update…
This story running on its second day…..
And getting BIGGER
Hmmmmm?