The Justice Department on Monday ordered federal prosecutors to drop the corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, a remarkable incursion into a continuing criminal case that raises questions about the fair administration of justice during President Trump’s second term.
The order was sent in a letter from the department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, to Manhattan prosecutors who brought the charges against the mayor last year.
Mr. Bove justified the decision to ask for the dismissal by saying that the mayor’s indictment had limited Mr. Adams’s ability to cooperate in President Trump’s immigration crackdown. He also suggested that the indictment, which was handed up in September, threatened to interfere with the June 2025 mayoral primary, despite the nine-month interval between the two events.
Mr. Bove explicitly said that the Justice Department had made its decision without assessing the strength of the evidence against Mr. Adams or the legal theories undergirding the case. Instead, his letter criticized the U.S. attorney who brought it and former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He offered expressly political arguments for dropping the charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery, asserting the urgency of Mr. Trump’s immigration objectives.
It will now fall to the acting head of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, Danielle R. Sassoon, whether to heed Mr. Bove’s order to dismiss the charges “as soon as is practicable” by filing a motion with the judge. A spokesman for Ms. Sassoon’s office declined to comment.
The letter was a remarkable intervention in a high-profile public corruption prosecution, one that cast the independence of federal prosecutors into doubt given the way Mr. Adams has curried favor with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bove directed that the charges against Mr. Adams be dismissed without prejudice, suggesting that the case could be revived if merited — or if it pleased the president….
Category Archives: Department of Justice
“Fiery Directives Under Trump’s Justice Dept. Signal a Significant Shift”
Hours after being sworn in as President Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi declared to the entire Justice Department work force, “This shameful era ends today.”
That assertion, in one of 14 memos she issued on Wednesday, underscored what many current and former law enforcement officials describe as a major — and alarming — departure from years of Justice Department practice in which it steered clear of political rhetoric. The new tone, they said, suggests the opposite, seeming to promise a campaign of intimidation against career prosecutors and agents viewed as insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
Such language is not unique to Ms. Bondi. Newly minted senior officials from powerful perches across the Justice Department have issued fiery broadsides against employees, denouncing “insubordination” or “abhorrent” conduct and, in one instance, vowing to pursue unspecified opponents of Mr. Trump’s cost-cutting efforts “to the ends of the Earth.”
One Justice Department lawyer who has worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations said the attorney general’s words were chilling in appearing to suggest that the new leadership of the department sees long-serving career lawyers as villains.
Another of Ms. Bondi’s memos urged “zealous” advocacy for the president’s agenda, part of a series of missives from top officials effectively demanding loyalty from their employees.
“I am not the president’s lawyer; I serve the people of the United States,” the lawyer said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “I’ve always been able to go to my supervisor and say, ‘I got this case and I’m uncomfortable with it.’ Based on the attorney general’s emails, it seems like those conversations are not welcome anymore, and that is scary.”
That memo warned that “any attorney who because of their personal political views or judgments declines to sign a brief or appear in court, refuses to advance good-faith arguments on behalf of the administration, or otherwise delays or impedes the department’s mission will be subject to discipline and potentially termination, consistent with applicable law.”
It has long been the practice within the Justice Department that lawyers do not substitute their own views for the administration’s goals or the department’s policies. On rare occasions, however, lawyers may argue that they cannot make a good-faith argument for a particular position. To some Justice Department lawyers, the new directives are intended to nip any such internal disagreement before an objection can be raised.
“Advocate of Jan. 6 Rioters Now Runs Office That Investigated Them”
NYT:
Ed Martin was in the mob outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, posting on social media that the violent riot that day was marked by “faith and joy.”
He has often echoed President Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, declaring on the night before the Capitol was stormed that “true Americans” should work until their “last breath” to “stop the steal.”
He has spent the past four years raising money for — and in some cases defending — people charged with joining the mob. And when the House committee that investigated Jan. 6 sent him a subpoena, he never complied, risking criminal charges.
Now, Mr. Martin, 54, has been tapped by Mr. Trump to oversee the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington where he has been put in charge of dismantling the office’s signature project: the sprawling investigation of Jan. 6 that he has energetically opposed.
While his role, for now, is temporary — Mr. Trump has not yet chosen a full-time candidate — Mr. Martin is unlike anyone else who has run the agency that has taken the lead in charging more than 1,500 people in connection with the Capitol attack.
In his long legal career, he has never been a prosecutor, spending more time as a political operative and radio host. Moreover, he is saddled by an array of potential conflicts arising from his efforts to exonerate Jan. 6 defendants — including serving on the board of an organization that helped to pay their legal fees.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington is one of the most important field divisions in the Justice Department, which for decades has aimed to insulate itself from partisan politics. It often takes on cases of significance in the realms of national security, espionage and public corruption. In many instances, it is led by someone who has worked there.
Mr. Martin holds an obvious appeal for Mr. Trump. He is a loyal soldier and a savvy political player who has often spun untruths in a way that has favored the president. And because he oversees criminal cases in Washington, his office was just asked to join the Justice Department’s new “Weaponization Working Group,” which will turn the investigative powers of the government on several of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies….
“Justice Dept.’s Weaponization Group Underscores Trump’s Quest for Retribution”
The Justice Department’s newly formed “Weaponization Working Group,” announced in a memo this week by Attorney General Pam Bondi, was purportedly intended to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers.
But a literal reading of its name suggests that the investigative body was also an example of the department itself, now under new leadership, weaponizing its expansive powers to scrutinize and perhaps take action against several officials who, for various reasons, have run afoul of President Trump.
“They are trying to politicize all this,” said Donald Voiret, a former F.B.I. senior executive who was the top agent in Seattle and also ran the bureau’s London office before retiring in 2022. “They are doing exactly what they accused the F.B.I. and D.O.J. of doing.”
The memo, issued on Wednesday, signaled the most significant first step in deploying the levers of government to carry out Mr. Trump’s repeated suggestions to exact retribution against those he perceives to be his enemies.
While the memo contained some conciliatory language, promising that no one who had “acted with a righteous spirit and just intentions” had any cause for alarm, it also included a laundry list of Republican boogeymen and grievances that the working group was intended to address.
At the top of that list were three prosecutors who all brought separate cases against Mr. Trump, even though there is no indication that any of them violated the law. They are the former special counsel Jack Smith; Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney; and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.
Mr. Smith’s two cases — accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to subvert the 2020 election and of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office in 2021 — were dismissed after Mr. Trump won re-election in November. The victory triggered a longstanding Justice Department policy that forbids pursuing prosecutions of a sitting president.
Mr. Bragg’s case was more successful and resulted in Mr. Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal on the eve of the 2016 election. In Ms. James’s case, Mr. Trump was found civilly liable of doctoring the value of his real estate portfolio and was ordered to pay a penalty of more than $450 million.
The directive is just as noteworthy for what it does not say. Former department officials and lawyers representing some of those who might be targeted said the memo was too ambiguous to provide a clear indication of how the department planned to proceed….
New Attorney General Bondi, Who Was Once a Foreign Agent for Qatar, Diminishes DOJ Criminal Oversight of Foreign Agents
The Justice Department is scaling back enforcement of laws governing foreign lobbying transparency and bribes of foreign officials, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced.
The Criminal Division’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit will prioritize investigations related to foreign bribery that facilitates the criminal operations of cartels and transnational criminal organizations, such as cases that involve bribery of foreign officials to “facilitate human smuggling and the trafficking of narcotics and firearms,” Bondi said in a Wednesday memo obtained by Bloomberg Law.
The FCPA prosecutors shall “shift focus away from investigations and cases that do not have such a connection,” she added.
Separately, Foreign Agents Registration Act enforcement “shall be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.” The Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, which houses the FARA unit, will “focus on civil enforcement, regulatory initiatives, and public guidance,” the memo said.
In tandem, the narrower emphases for FCPA and FARA teams signals a dramatic retreat from two growth areas of white collar enforcement over the past ten to 15 years.
On Bondi’s past representation of Qatar, see here.
Georgia: “Secretary of State asks Attorney General to drop DOJ lawsuit over controversial voting law”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is sending a letter to the newly sworn-in United States Attorney General Pam Bondi asking that she “reconsider and withdraw” the lawsuit the Department of Justice filed in 2021.
“When she sees our case, I believe it’s proper for her to dismiss it,” Raffensperger told Channel 2 investigative reporter Justin Gray.
Bondi was just sworn in Wednesday at the White House on the same day Raffensperger sent his letter.
The DOJ lawsuit filed under the Biden administration alleges that Georgia’s controversial election lawsuit SB 202 violates federal law under the Voting Rights Act…..
“D.C. U.S. attorney fires Jan. 6 prosecutors, launches new probes”
WaPo:
Interim D.C. U.S. attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr., on Friday dismissed about 30 federal prosecutors who have worked on Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot cases over the past four years, undertaking a housecleaning of the top prosecutor’s office in Washington, while preparing to extend the office’s scrutiny to top Democratic leaders and former Justice Department officials, people close to Martin said.
The prosecutors were on probationary status after being converted to full-time from shorter-term positions after Election Day under circumstances the Trump administration is investigating, according to documents from Martin and acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove that were emailed around 5 p.m. and viewed by The Washington Post.
In his first 11 days in office, Martin, 54, has moved quickly to align the office with President Donald Trump’s political views — and drawn significant criticism in the process. Since being appointed on Jan. 20, Martin has ordered top supervisors in the office to investigate their colleagues’ handling of the Capitol riot prosecutions in the wake of Trump’s mass pardons and threatened subordinates who disclose or criticize his actions.
“Justice Dept. Is Said to Discuss Dropping Case Against Eric Adams”
Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
The officials have also spoken to Mr. Adams’s defense team since Mr. Trump took office, the people said. The defense team is led by Alex Spiro, who is also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the president’s closest advisers.
Mr. Trump has the power to pardon Mr. Adams, who as New York City’s mayor could aid his plans for mass deportations. In December, Mr. Trump said that the mayor had been treated “pretty unfairly” by prosecutors and suggested he was considering issuing a pardon.
But if prosecutors were to dismiss the case entirely, it could allow Mr. Adams to insist on his innocence to voters as he seeks another term as mayor, while allowing Mr. Trump to avoid the appearance of a pardon that many might view as unwarranted.
“U.S. seeks to drop case against Virginia over voter-roll cleanup before election”
The U.S. Justice Department sought Tuesday to pull out of an ongoing voting rights case against Virginia over the state’s removal of names from voter rolls shortly before the November election.
The department’s motion for dismissal, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, doesn’t end the case, because there are also private plaintiffs, including voting rights groups, challenging Virginia’s action.
The motion came soon after the Justice Department, now under the Trump administration, reversed the Biden administration’s position in a case involving Louisiana’s congressional maps, and amid a reported reconsideration of the department’s approach to civil rights cases. Some voting rights watchdogs fear that the department’s priorities will shift under the new leadership.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the filing.
Danielle Lang, senior director of voting rights at the Campaign Legal Center, represents the other organizations bringing the lawsuit, including the League of Women Voters of Virginia. She said the department’s withdrawal means that ongoing disputes over whether those organizations have legal standing to sue are now more critical, because private plaintiffs face a higher burden than the federal government in establishing their right to sue.
So far, Lang said, courts have found that her clients do have standing to bring the case….
“Justice Dept. Fires Prosecutors Who Worked on Trump Investigations”
The acting attorney general on Monday fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the two criminal investigations into Donald J. Trump for the special counsel Jack Smith, saying they could not be trusted to “faithfully implement” the president’s agenda, a Justice Department spokesman said.
Justice Department veterans called the firings an egregious violation of well-established laws meant to preserve the integrity and professionalism of government agencies.
What made it all the more jarring, current and former officials said, was that such a momentous and aggressive step had been initiated by an obscure acting attorney general, James McHenry, operating on behalf of a president with a stated desire for vengeance, and few advisers with the stature or inclination to restrain him.
The department did not name the fired prosecutors. But a person who worked with some members of Mr. Smith’s team said that many of the dismissals appeared to target career lawyers and most likely violated civil service protections for nonpolitical employees….
In the letters to the prosecutors, which were transmitted electronically on Monday afternoon, Mr. McHenry claimed that Mr. Trump had constitutional authority over personnel matters under Article II of the Constitution to fire career staff members, rather than arguing they were terminated for cause based on poor performance or improper conduct.
“Given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president’s agenda faithfully,” the firing memo said.
Greg Brower, who was a U.S. attorney during the George W. Bush administration, said the move was unheard-of.
“This is unprecedented, given the career status of these people, which makes them not subject to dismissal by the president, and the apparent lack of any cause that the department has been able to articulate,” Mr. Brower said. “And so I suspect we will see them exercise their rights to appeal” to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency that reviews the claims of dismissed civil service workers and can reinstate them.
The rationale expressed in the firing memo contradicts decades of civil service law, which says employees can be fired only for misconduct or poor performance, not for doing their jobs, said Kristin Alden, a lawyer who specializes in federal employment issues.
“Louisiana argues parts of Voting Rights Act are unconstitutional in redistricting case”
When I heard the news of the DOJ backing away from its position in the Callais redistricting case out of Louisiana before the Supreme Court, I realized that I had failed to link to this important story from Jan. 7 in the Louisiana Illuminator about Louisiana’s litigation position in another Voting Rights Act case:
Attorneys representing Louisiana in a lawsuit against the state legislative redistricting plans passed in 2022 are arguing that a key piece of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional and should not be applied to the state.
The case could produce a bellwether decision that impacts Black voting strength in several states where similar challenges have arisen.
Arguments were presented Tuesday to a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case Nairne v. Landry, in which Black voters are challenging the most recent legislative redistricting maps as unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. …
Every case brought under Section 2 is likely to be used as a test case for those that seek to have that portion of the Voting Rights Act overturned, advocates have said.
The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in Nairne in response to the state’s arguments against Section 2 but remained neutral on the other aspects of the case.
Noah Bokat-Lindell, a DOJ civil rights attorney, argued states cannot get a carveout from a generally applicable statute. For example, they cannot become exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act because a state argues it doesn’t discriminate against disabled people, he said.
In a press conference after the hearing, Attorney General Liz Murrill argued that if Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was ruled unconstitutional, Black voters could still count on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“Those are legal arguments that we wanted to preserve so that they eventually might make it up to the United States Supreme Court,” Murrill said. “They’ve also been percolating in a number of other cases related to the scope and continuing application of Section 2 to states under current conditions.”
Let’s watch what Trump’s DOJ does in this 5th Circuit case.
“Trump Seeks Pause of Supreme Court Cases, Disavows DOJ Stance on Voting Rights Act “
Jimmy Hoover for the NLJ:
In Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court will soon hear appeals to uphold the remedial map by an unlikely alliance of the state of Louisiana and the NAACP Louisiana State Conference and other supporters of the new map, codified as S.B. 8.
In a December brief, the Biden DOJ urged the Supreme Court to “vacate”the lower court’s ruling in light of its “failure to apply the proper” legal framework for racial gerrymandering cases. Former U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar had even sought argument time for her office when the case is heard by the court.
On Friday, however, Harris—a former Williams & Connolly partner—advised the court that she was rescinding the DOJ’s position in the case.
Following the change in Administration, the Department of Justice hasreconsidered the government’s position in these cases,” she wrote.
“The purpose of this letter is to notify the Court that the previously filed brief no longer represents the position of the United States,” Harris added. “In addition, the United States is withdrawing its pending motion to participate in the oral argument.”…
“Justice Department Orders a Halt to Civil Rights Work”
The Justice Department has ordered an immediate halt to all new civil rights cases or investigations — and signaled that it might back out of Biden-era agreements with police departments that engaged in discrimination or violence, according to two internal memos sent to staff on Wednesday.
The actions, while expected, represent an abrupt about-face for a department that had for the past four years aggressively investigated high-profile instances of violence and systemic discrimination in local law enforcement and government agencies.
The first of two short memos sent by Chad Mizelle, the chief of staff at the department, ordered a “litigation freeze” at the department’s Civil Rights Division to decide whether Trump appointees want “to initiate any new cases,” according to a screenshot of the document viewed by The New York Times.
Mr. Mizelle also barred lawyers working for the division from filing “motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs or statements of interest,” unless they receive the approval of senior Trump appointees. It is the clearest sign yet that the hard-line conservatives taking over the department intend to swiftly sweep away the previous administration’s liberal agenda….
“Jack Smith’s Accountability Effort Ends With More Freedom for Trump”
In a closing argument he never got to make to a jury, Jack Smith, the former special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump, insisted that his thwarted prosecution was righteous and that his investigators set an example “for others to fight for justice.”
“While we were not able to bring the cases we charged to trial, I believe the fact that our team stood up for the rule of law matters,” Mr. Smith wrote in a final report issued in the middle of the night, while much of the country was asleep.
But the culmination of his work may have in fact had the opposite effect. Given the rulings that went against him by courts that Mr. Trump helped shape, Mr. Smith departs the most important prosecutorial job in the country over the past two years with the unintended consequence of giving Mr. Trump and every future president more, not less, freedom from legal constraints.
And the Justice Department, whose principles Mr. Smith fiercely defended in his last hours as special counsel, now enters a second Trump administration with less authority to pursue a president than it has had in half a century, after a sweeping Supreme Court decision that granted presidents broad immunity….