The Thursday Afternoon Massacre

Not all heroes wear capes

This is an update on my post yesterday about Trump’s corruption of the Department of Justice. If you missed that post, you can find it here:

Trump's Corruption of the Justice Department

In that post I discussed how Emil Bove III, the acting Deputy Attorney General and Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, had ordered prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to drop the prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. In a remarkable memo to the New York prosecutors, Bove said dismissal was warranted because the prosecution was interfering with Adams’s ability to help the Trump administration implement its immigration agenda, and that the timing of the indictment suggested it had been politically motivated.

I also wrote this about the New York prosecutors:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is famously independent, earning it the nickname the “Sovereign District of New York.” It will be interesting to see how they react to the order to drop the case. There’s no doubt it ultimately will be dismissed, but we might see some prosecutors noisily resign in protest.

Yesterday that’s exactly what happened - and it was noisy indeed.

Danielle Sassoon (Kent Nishimura/ The New York Times)

Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned rather than carry out what she rightly viewed as an improper and corrupt order to drop the case. Bove then transferred control of the case from the New York U.S. Attorney’s Office to the Public Integrity Section at Main Justice, which specializes in corruption cases. Two career prosecutors who oversaw that section, Kevin Driscoll and John Keller, then promptly resigned rather than dismiss the case. Three other prosecutors who worked under them in the Public Integrity section then resigned as well. (A fourth was on leave giving birth, but is expected to resign upon her return.)

On Saturday evening, October 20, 1973, president Richard Nixon ordered his Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate special counsel Archibald Cox after Cox subpoenaed Nixon’s Oval Office tape recordings. Richardson resigned rather than carry out the corrupt order. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox, and Ruckelshaus also refused and resigned. The third in line, Solicitor General Robert Bork, finally agreed to carry out the order. This incident became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

Now Trump has his own Thursday Afternoon Massacre, and it’s a major black eye for his fledgling Department of Justice.

Sassoon’s Letter and Bove’s Response

Sassoon is not some woke liberal holdover from the Biden administration. She’s a well-regarded career prosecutor, probably best known for handling the case against cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried. She clerked for conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia and is a member of the conservative Federalist Society. She was chosen by Trump’s team to head the New York prosecutor’s office on an interim basis.

Sassoon wrote an eloquent 8-page letter to the new Attorney General Pam Bondi explaining why she could not, in good conscience, file a motion to dismiss the Adams case. She said the case against Adams was strong and would support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt and noted Bove had never questioned that. She said Bove’s memo directed her to dismiss the case for political reasons that have nothing to do with the facts or the law, and that she could not do that consistent with her oath of office and duties as a federal prosecutor.

Sassoon noted it would be improper to dismiss a criminal prosecution in order to allow the defendant to help the administration carry out its political agenda. But that’s exactly what Bove had instructed her to do. She said Adams and his counsel had expressly argued that he could only effectively assist with enforcing the administration’s immigration policies if the indictment were dropped. She went on:

Rather than be rewarded, Adams's advocacy should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case. Although Mr. Bove disclaimed any intention to exchange leniency in this case for Adams's assistance in enforcing federal law, that is the nature of the bargain laid bare in Mr. Bove's memo.

She then dropped this bombshell of a footnote:

I attended a meeting on January 31, 2025, with Mr. Bove, Adams's counsel, and members of my office. Adams's attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department's enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed. Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting's conclusion.

This is an allegation of at least attempted federal bribery in violation of 18 U.S.C. 201(b): offering a thing of value (Adams’s assistance) in return for an official act (dismissing the indictment). A seasoned federal prosecutor like Sassoon doesn’t use terms like “quid pro quo” lightly, and knows the implications.

(I can’t resist pointing out that Bove’s actions described in the footnote also call to mind the immortal words of drug kingpin Stringer Bell in the TV series The Wire: “Is you taking notes on a criminal f*ckin’ conspiracy?”)

Sassoon went on to calmly and thoroughly debunk Bove’s other rationales for dismissal, including the bogus claim that the timing of the case improperly interfered with Adams’s election. She concluded by asking to meet with Bondi to discuss reconsidering the dismissal and offering to resign if that was not possible.

The entire letter is really worth a read.

Bove’s letter in response was defensive and slightly unhinged. He said he accepted Sassoon’s resignation (even though that offer was directed to Bondi, not him). He accused her of violating the oath she took as a prosecutor because she acted consistent with her own view of her constitutional obligations rather than in accord with the “policies of a democratically elected president.” (Yes, Emil, that’s precisely the point - prosecutors take an oath to the Constitution, not to the president.) He said the other prosecutors on Sassoon’s team were being placed on administrative leave pending an investigation of their conduct, based on her representation that they agreed with her decision.

Bove also said he was having the case transferred to Main Justice in Washington, which would file the motion to dismiss. If he thought that would quickly resolve the matter, he was mistaken. As I mentioned above, five prosecutors there (so far) have also resigned rather than follow Bove’s order. As of Friday afternoon, no motion to dismiss the case has been filed.

Just as I was finishing up this post, news broke that the lead prosecutor on the Adams case in New York, Hagan Scotten, has also resigned, saying he agrees fully with Sassoon’s decision. Scotten, one of the prosecutors Bove had placed on administrative leave, is a decorated military veteran and a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts — again, hardly a liberal squish. He wrote a brief but awesome resignation letter to Bove, concluding: “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.”

Resign, or Stay and Fight?

I’ve seen some people online arguing Sassoon and the others should not have resigned but should have stayed, refused to dismiss the case, and made Bove or Bondi fire them. I don’t think that’s right.

First, if you do that, it’s not as though they are going to change their minds and let you stay and prosecute the case. The Trump administration clearly has no qualms about firing people they suspect of being disloyal. So if you refuse to follow the order and make them fire you, you end up in the same place anyway.

Second, if you refuse the order and try to stay, that’s insubordination. That actually gives them grounds to fire you. And that would allow the administration to at least try to shift the story from the corrupt nature of the underlying order to your own insubordinate conduct. (Bove is trying to do that anyway, but it’s far less effective in the face of honorable resignations that do not actually defy any orders.)

Resigning and explaining why is the principled thing to do. It gives these prosecutors the moral high ground. They are saying, “I still respect the institution and the chain of command, and will not be insubordinate and disobey my superiors. But I cannot in good conscience carry out this order. Therefore I have to leave.”

Others have suggested that good prosecutors should stay and try to protect the institution and the rule of law from the inside. In general that may be desirable, although that’s a very personal decision for each individual. But that’s not a viable option once you’ve been ordered to do something that you’re convinced violates your oath and responsibilities. If you’re in that situation, as these prosecutors were, then your choices are either to resign or to capitulate and follow what you believe is an unjust and corrupt order. They made the honorable choice.

I’ve also heard people suggest the prosecutors should have stayed because Trump will now just replace them with loyalists who will carry out his political agenda without question. That may be true, but that ship sailed when Trump won the election. That’s the government we have now. But our response can’t be to expect honorable people to violate their oaths of office and agree to carry out orders they know to be wrong, simply to remain employed.

Finally, the noisy resignations also highlight the corrupt nature of the deal with Adams and keep that story in the news, as it has been for several days now. Quietly capitulating and filing the motion to dismiss would be a one-day story and then everyone would move on. The resignations are a form of civil disobedience that call attention to an injustice. The Thursday Afternoon Massacre is shining a spotlight on the Trump administration’s deal with Mayor Adams by showing that even Trump’s own appointees at the Justice Department believe it’s corrupt. That’s a good thing.

What Happens Now?

Presumably at some point Bove will make his way far enough down the food chain at DOJ to find someone willing to sign their name to the motion to dismiss. But as Sassoon noted in her letter, the judge doesn’t have to quietly agree to grant the motion. At a minimum, if I were the judge, I’d insist that Bove appear before me personally to explain what happened, why dropping the case is in the public interest, and why so many career prosecutors disagree with him. That could be a very interesting hearing if the judge grills Bove about the allegations in Sassoon’s letter.

At some point, the case will go away. Practically speaking, a judge can’t force the Justice Department to proceed with a case it doesn’t want to prosecute. As for Adams, he is already keeping up his side of the bargain; there were reports today that he just agreed to open Rikers Island prison to federal immigration authorities, which the New York Times described as a “significant shift in the city’s sanctuary policies.”

Will this story break through to the public, with everything else that is going on? It’s hard to say. But this is a major embarrassment for the Trump administration and his new Justice Department team. During the Nixon administration, the Saturday Night Massacre was followed shortly by Congress beginning impeachment proceedings. That’s not going to happen with this craven Congress, of course. But the resignations keep the spotlight on the corrupt nature of the deal with Adams, and that will continue — particularly if the judge holds a hearing on the motion to dismiss. That’s a good thing.

But even if it has no long-term effect at all, these prosecutors should feel good about doing the right thing. So many people in Washington have been quietly rolling over for the Trump administration — I’m thinking in particular of Senate Republicans meekly voting to confirm Cabinet nominees who are dangerously unqualified. It does my heart good to see career prosecutors honoring their oaths and standing up for the rule of law. They have acted in the best traditions of the Justice Department that I know and love and that has been under assault by the Trump administration.

It may not make any sense, and it probably won’t last. But the principled stand taken by these DOJ attorneys has left me feeling more hopeful than I have in weeks. I’m going to enjoy that for now.