NEW YORK — A former Watergate prosecutor on Monday urged a federal judge presiding over the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams to assign a special counsel to help decide how to handle the Justice Department’s request to drop charges while three ex-U.S. attorneys urged a “searching factual inquiry.”
Attorney Nathaniel Akerman told Judge Dale E. Ho in a letter filed in the case record in Manhattan federal court that he sought to intervene because nobody was representing the public’s interest after three attorneys from the Justice Department in Washington made the request Friday.
The one-time Watergate prosecutor urged the judge to reject the dismissal request, saying the court could look into how the Justice Department reached its decision and could require Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who first directed prosecutors to drop the case, to appear in court and explain his position.
Akerman, representing Common Cause, a nonpartisan advocacy group for U.S. elections integrity, said the judge may ultimately need to appoint an independent special prosecutor to the case.
Three ex-U.S. attorneys also submitted arguments to Ho Monday, saying what was at stake was “far more than an internal prosecutorial dispute about an individual case.”
“The public furor that has arisen during the past week raises concerns about respect for the rule of law and the division of power between the Executive and Judicial Branches of government in our nation,” wrote John S. Martin Jr., the Manhattan U.S. attorney from 1980 to 1983; Robert J. Cleary, U.S. attorney for New Jersey from 1999 to 2002; and Deirdre M. Daly, U.S. attorney for Connecticut from 2013 to 2017.
They suggested Ho first learn why the Justice Department wanted the charges dismissed and whether its reasons were pretextual.
If the judge decides dismissal of charges is inappropriate, he will have multiple remedies, including the power to appoint a special prosecutor or to direct federal prosecutors to make evidence, including grand jury materials, available to state and local prosecutors, they said.
They also wrote that a factual inquiry might lead to other “necessary and important outcomes,” including the possibility of a contempt proceeding, criminal referrals and disciplinary recommendations.
“In short, depending on the circumstances, the Court could have a variety of procedural avenues available to protect the integrity of the Court and the justice system from abuse,” the former prosecutors said.
The ex-prosecutors also told the judge that additional public statements regarding the events of the past week have been issued or would be issued shortly by hundreds of former federal prosecutors.
Adams has pleaded not guilty to charges that while in his prior role as Brooklyn borough president, he accepted over $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions and lavish travel perks from a Turkish official and business leaders seeking to buy his influence.
The last week has featured after an unusual public fight between Bove, the second-in-command of the Justice Department, and two top New York federal prosecutors: interim Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan who led the Adams prosecution.
On Thursday, Sassoon resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. A day later, Scotten resigned, noting that Sassoon had properly resisted a demand that the charges be dropped and the possibility they could be reinstated after this year’s election.
“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,” he wrote.
On Monday, Adams — amid calls to resign by some Democrats — confirmed that four of his top deputies had decided to resign in the fallout from the Justice Department’s push to end the corruption case against him and ensure his cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown.
In his letter to Ho, Akerman echoed Sassoon’s assertion that the Justice Department had accepted a request by Adams’ lawyers for a “quid pro quo” — his help on immigration enforcement in exchange for dropping the case. She called it a “breathtaking and dangerous precedent.”
Akerman wrote that there was “overwhelming evidence from DOJ’s own internal documents showing that the dismissal of the Adams indictment is not in the public interest and is part of a corrupt quid pro quo between Mayor Adams and the Trump administration.”
He said the internal documents show that in return for dismissal of the indictment, Adams agreed to improperly assist the Trump administration with immigration enforcement.
Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro said Thursday that the allegation of a quid pro quo was a “total lie.”
When he directed Sassoon to drop the charges a week ago, Bove said the mayor of America’s largest city was needed to assist in Trump’s immigration crackdown and the dismissal of charges could enable Adams to campaign for reelection against multiple opponents unencumbered by criminal charges.