Mayor Adams Case
http://www.clarkcunningham.org/AdamsCase.html
Updated as of Feb. 21, 2025

Memo from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, Feb. 20, 2025 (“You are directed, as authorized by the Attorney General, to dismiss the pending charges in United States v. Adams … as soon as is practicable … The Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the· case is based, which are issues on which we defer to the U.S. Attorney's Office at this time.”)

Benjamin Weiser & Jonah E. Bromwich, An Ambitious Prosecutor Quits Rather Than Do Trump’s Bidding, NY Times,  Feb. 12, 2025.
"Danielle R. Sassoon, Manhattan’s interim U.S. attorney, built a life on conservative values and amassed a daunting resume. On Thursday, she took a stand against the Justice Department where she had made her career. ... She graduated [law school] in 2011 and served in consecutive clerkships for conservative judges. The first, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the federal appeals court for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., recalled Ms. Sassoon as whip-smart and versatile — equally at home in the higher precincts of appellate law and before a jury. ... He added: “All I would say is that Danielle is someone who’s very principled and rigorously honest and plays it straight.” She later clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Antonin Scalia, a giant of the conservative legal movement."
-- Interim United States Attorney Danielle Sassoon (S.D.N.Y.) letter to US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Feb. 12. 2025 (8 single-spaced pages) (Sassoon was appointed interim US Attorney by President Trump in January 2025) ("Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations. … I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law. I understand that Mr. Bove disagrees, and I am mindful of your recent order reiterating prosecutors' duty to make good-faith arguments in support of the Executive Branch's positions. ... But because I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor. N.Y.R.P.C.3.3.")

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, Feb. 13, 2025 (cc: Assistant US Attorneys Hagan Scotten & Derek Wikstrom) ("your resignation is accepted. … you indicated that the prosecution team is aware of your communications with the Justice Department, is supportive of your approach, and is unwilling to comply with the order to dismiss the case. Accordingly, the AUSAs principally responsible for this case are being placed on off-duty, administrative leave pending investigations by the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, both of which will also evaluate your conduct")

Assistant US Attorney Hagan Scott to Acting Deputy AG Emil Bove ("I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse. But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so, for the reasons stated in her February 12, 2025 letter to the Attorney General. … I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.") ("Mr. Scotten served three combat tours in Iraq as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer and earned two Bronze Stars. He graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Brett M. Kavanaugh before he, too, became an Supreme Court justice." NY Times, Feb. 14, 2025)

William K. Rashbaum, Benjamin Weiser, Jonah E. Bromwich & Maggie Haberman, Order to Drop Adams Case Prompts Resignations in New York and Washington, NY Times  Feb. 13, 2025

Michael R. Sisak, Larry Neumeister, Alanna Durkin Richer & Eric Tucker, Justice Department asks court to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, AP Feb. 14, 2025

Jonah E. Bromwich, Emma G. Fitzsimmons & Alyce McFadden, Adams Case Highlights: Justice Dept. Asks Judge to Dismiss Case, Capping Days of Drama, NY Times Feb. 14, 2025

Michael S. Schmidt, William K. Rashbaum, Maggie Haberman & Jonah E. Bromwich, How the Justice Dept. Helped Sink Its Own Case Against Eric Adams: A top Trump appointee guided Mr. Adams’s legal team as they crafted an argument for dismissing corruption charges against the mayor of America’s largest city, NY Times Feb. 14, 2025

Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush & Adam Goldman, Under Pressure to Drop Charges, Career Prosecutors Weighed Stark Options, NY Times Feb. 14, 2025

Michael Rothfeld, Nicole Hong & Bianca Pallaro,  Here Are the Charges Eric Adams Faces, Annotated, NY Times Sept. 26, 2024
Hurubie Meko & Elena Shao, Tracking Charges and Investigations in Eric Adams’s Orbit, NY Times Updated Feb. 10, 2025
-Adams Indictment

Adam Liptak, A Rupture on the Right Over Prosecutors, Politics and the Rule of Law, NY Times Feb. 14, 2025

Aaron Blake, Why the budding Trump DOJ scandal is a big deal, Wash. Post Feb. 15, 2025

Daniel Richman. Guest Essay: All the President’s Sock Puppets, NY Times Feb. 16, 2025 (Richman, a former federal prosecutor, is a law professor at Columbia University)

Michael R. Sisak, Four deputies for New York City Mayor Adams resign as feds drop corruption case, PBS News Feb. 17, 2025

Larry Neumeister, Ex-Watergate prosecutor urges judge to reject request to drop charges against NYC mayor, ABC News Feb. 17, 2025
--Letter amicus brief submitted by Common Cause, Feb. 17, 2025 (We respectfully ask the Court to appoint a special counsel … [The Court] may consider … allowing discovery of the DOJ with respect to its decision-making in this matter … sanctioning DOJ and/or Mr. Bove personally for making improper and unethical demands on prosecutors in New York and Washington …appointing an independent special prosecutor to continue the prosecution … and ordering that the special prosecutor have access to grand jury materials and other evidence assembled by the SDNY”)

Amicus Brief submitted to Judge Ho by three former U.S. Attorneys, Feb. 17, 2025 (One of the three amicus is John S. Martin, Jr., US Attorney for the Southern District of New York under President Reagan (1980-83), appointed US District Judge for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush (1990-2003).) ("Amici believe that this Court should conduct a factual inquiry before ruling on the pending request [to dismiss the indictment against Mayor Adams]")

Devlin Barrett, At a conservative conference, Pam Bondi calls the case against New York Mayor Eric Adams “incredibly weak.” NY Times Feb. 20, 2025 (“In an interview with Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the prosecution of Mayor Adams 'was an incredibly weak case filed to make deportation harder; that’s why they did it.’ … At the conference on Thursday, Ms. Bondi argued that the charges against the mayor were so weak she doubted they could win a guilty verdict.”)

US v Adams, Judge Ho Order on Motion to Dismiss Indictment, Feb. 21, 2025 (trial adjourned without a new date) (“[T]o assist with its decision-making via an adversarial process, the Court exercises its inherent authority to appoint Paul Clement … as amicus curiae to present arguments on the Government’s Motion to Dismiss. … [T]he parties and amicus curiae shall address: 1) The legal standard for leave to dismiss an indictment under Rule 48(a); 2) Whether, and to what extent, a court may consider materials other than the Rule 48(a) motion itself; 3) Under what circumstances, if any, additional procedural steps and/or further inquiry would be appropriate before resolving a Rule 48(a) motion; 4) Under what circumstances, if leave is granted, dismissal should be with or without prejudice; 5) If leave were denied under Rule 48(a), what practical consequences would follow. ... Briefs shall be due no later than March 7, 2025. If necessary, the Court will hold oral argument at 2:00 p.m. on March 14, 2025. ”) (Paul Clement, a former Justice Scalia law clerk, served under President George W. Bush as US Solicitor General-- responsible for representing the United States in cases before the US Supreme Court.)

Letter from Alex Spiro, defense counsel for Mayor Adams, to Judge Ho, Feb. 21, 2025 (“We are writing to alert the Court to recent out-of-court statements by Attorney General Pam Bondi and her chief of staff that constitute admissions of a party opponent under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(2). The Attorney General described the indictment in this case as ‘incredibly weak,’ and said that the charges against the Mayor were so weak she doubted prosecutors could secure a guilty verdict.”)

Could the federal court investigate Attorney General Bondi and Acting Deputy Attorney General Bove for possible unethical conduct?

Interim US Atty Sassoon letter to Attorney General Bondi (Feb. 12, 2025)
"Because the law does not support a dismissal, and because I am confident that Adams has committed the crimes with which he is charged, I cannot agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations. … I do not believe there are reasonable arguments in support of a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss a case that is well supported by the evidence and the law. …[B]ecause I do not see any good-faith basis for the proposed position, I cannot make such arguments consistent with my duty of candor. N.Y.R.P.C.3.3." (emphasis added)

New York State Rules of Professional Conduct (NYRPC)
RULE 3.3:
CONDUCT BEFORE A TRIBUNAL
(a)  “A lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of fact or law to a tribunal or fail to correct a false statement of material fact or law previously made to the tribunal by the lawyer” (emphasis added)

Local Rules – U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York
Local Civil Rule 1.5. Discipline of Attorneys
(a) Committee on Grievances. The chief judge will appoint a committee of the Board of Judges known as the Committee on Grievances, which, under the direction of the chief judge will have charge of all matters relating to the discipline of attorneys.
(b) “Discipline or other relief, of the types set forth in paragraph (c) below, may be imposed, by the Committee on Grievances, after notice and opportunity to respond as set forth in paragraph (d) below, if any of the following grounds is found by clear and convincing evidence … [an] attorney is found to have engaged in conduct violative of the New York State Rules of Professional Conduct”
(c) “Discipline …  may consist of … suspension, or an order striking the name of the attorney from the roll of attorneys admitted to the bar of this court.”
(d) Procedure .. Complaints in writing alleging any ground for discipline or other relief set forth in paragraph (b) above shall be directed to the chief judge, who shall refer those complaints to the Committee on Grievances.
(f) “The remedies provided by this rule are in addition to the remedies available to individual district judges and magistrate judges under applicable law with respect to lawyers appearing before them.”
Local Rule 1.2(l)
“Attorneys appearing for the Department of Justice may appear before the court without requesting pro hac vice admission. Those attorneys must request electronic filing privileges through the PACER website. … “Only an attorney who has been ... admitted or who is a member of the bar of this court may enter appearances for parties, sign stipulations, or receive payments on judgments, decrees, or orders.”

American Oversight Request to New York State Grievance Commission to Investigate Acting Attorney General Emil Bove, Feb. 19, 2025

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http://www.clarkcunningham.org/Trump-InvestigationsLitigationImpeachment.html