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 sought to transfer the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption cases, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
The 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.”
“I have always considered it my obligation to pursue justice impartially, without favor to the wealthy or those who occupy important public office, or harsher treatment for the less powerful,” she said. “I therefore deem it necessary to the faithful discharge of my duties to raise the concerns expressed in this letter with you and to request an opportunity to meet to discuss them further.”
Ms. Sassoon, 38, made a startling accusation in her letter. She wrote that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what she said 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.”
She said that Mr. Bove had scolded a member of her team for taking notes during the meeting and ordered that the notes be collected at the meeting’s end….
“Elections, Courts, and Democratic Crisis: Constitutional Structure and the 2020 Election Cases”
Manoj Mate has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, University of Chicago Legal Forum). Here is the abstract:
This essay analyzes how the U.S. constitutional order responds to democratic crisis, by examining how the Supreme Court adjudicated cases related to and arising from the response to the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the January 6th Capitol attack. It analyzes the Court’s approaches to constitutional structure in key cases and how these approaches impact constitutional capacity to address democratic crises. The essay analyzes key weaknesses in the U.S. constitutional framework and how the effort to overturn the 2020 election sought to exploit those vulnerabilities. It then examines how the Supreme Court adjudicated cases related to the effort to overturn the 2020 election, including Moore v. Harper, Trump v. Anderson, and Trump v. United States. I analyze how each of these cases reflected distinct models of constitutional structure and modalities or approaches to constitutional interpretation. I argue that application of constitutional structure-based approaches in these cases pose key challenges for the constitutional order’s ability to respond to democratic crises, and trace how the Court utilized structure-based approaches in ways that weakened our capacity to respond to democratic disaster.
I critiques these approaches and suggest considering insights from comparative constitutional law, including the concept of a “basic structure doctrine” to provide support for court enforcement of the disqualification provision in Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment. This approach would go beyond analysis of constitutional structure and the allocation of power, to consider the threats posed by certain actions to core elements and features of U.S. constitutional governance and to reconceptualize how the 2020 election cases could be analyzes with reference to the basic features of the U.S. Constitution. This approach would go beyond analysis of constitutional structure and the allocation of power, to consider the threats posed by certain actions to core elements and features of U.S. constitutional governance.
Top Recent Downloads in Election Law on SSRN
Rank | Paper | Downloads |
---|---|---|
1. | Misconstruing the Electoral Count Act: A Response to Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte Seth Barrett Tillman National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth) – Faculty of Law Date Posted: 13 Jan 2025 Last Revised: 04 Feb 2025 | 875 |
2. | The “Determinative Popular Vote”: Measuring the Margin in U.S. Presidential Elections Mark Haidar and Aidan Calvelli Harvard University – Harvard Law School and Princeton University, Department of Politics, Students Date Posted: 19 Dec 2024 Last Revised: 29 Jan 2025 | 325 |
3. | Coups and Punishment in the Constitutional Order Anthony Michael Kreis Georgia State University – College of Law Date Posted: 29 Jan 2025 Last Revised: 29 Jan 2025 | 179 |
4. | Originalism, Election Law, and Democratic Self-Government Joshua SellersU niversity of Texas at Austin – School of Law Date Posted: 04 Feb 2025 Last Revised: 04 Feb 2025 | 145 |
5. | The Good Lawyers of January 6 W. Bradley Wendel Cornell University – School of Law Date Posted: 13 Dec 2024 Last Revised: 13 Dec 2024 | 135 |
6. | “The Real Preference of Voters”: Madison’s Idea of a Top-Three Election and The Present Necessity of Reform Edward B. Foley Ohio State University (OSU) – Michael E. Moritz College of Law Date Posted: 15 Jan 2025 Last Revised: 15 Jan 2025 | 101 |
7. | The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Redistricting Commissions in the 2021 Cycle Samuel Wang and Zachariah Sippy Princeton University – Princeton Neuroscience Institute and Independent Date Posted: 10 Jan 2025 Last Revised: 10 Jan 2025 | 100 |
8. | Campaign Finance and Political Polarization Richard H. Pildes New York University School of Law Date Posted: 13 Dec 2024 Last Revised: 10 Jan 2025 | 99 |
9. | People v. The Court: The Next Revolution in Constitutional Law David L. Sloss Santa Clara University – School of Law Date Posted: 17 Dec 2024 Last Revised: 22 Jan 2025 | 91 |
10. | A Democratic Rule of Law Jedediah S. Britton-Purdy Duke University School of Law Date Posted: 17 Dec 2024 Last Revised: 18 Dec 2024 | 72 |
“Meta’s Oversight Board should just quit, critics say”
A coalition of advocacy groups from around the world is calling on Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board to resign en masse to protest the social media giant’s recent pullback on content moderation.
In an open letter shared with the Tech Brief ahead of its publication Thursday, the Global Coalition for Tech Justice says Meta “has abandoned any pretense of oversight” after the five-year-old board was reportedly blindsided by some of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s January policy changes.
The coalition, which says it represents more than 250 organizations and experts from 55 countries, criticizes the board for not publicly pushing back on changes that it says will foster lies, degrade discourse and fuel attacks on women and LGBTQ+ people.
“Trump takes aim at agencies that police wrongdoing, protect federal workers”
President Donald Trump is taking aim at federal offices that investigate government malfeasance and protect workers from retribution, summarily firing and replacing five top ethics officials this week in an apparent attempt to consolidate his power over the sprawling federal bureaucracy.
Among those fired in the past week: the head of the Office of Government Ethics, which polices high-ranking officials suspected of violating conflict-of-interest rules; the leader of the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower reports from government workers — and protects those workers from retribution; the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who just Monday released a report detailing the cost to taxpayers of Trump’s effort to dismantle the agency; the chairwoman of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears appeals to firings and other disciplinary actions against federal employees; and the chairwoman of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, which protects federal employee unions from actions taken against them.
The firings were met with widespread condemnation from former officials and good-government advocates, who called them an ominous indication of how Trump intends to flout the normal guardrails — and, in some cases, federal law — that constrain public officials. Trump has pledged to root out government waste, fraud and abuse, but advocates noted that he is systematically eliminating many of the internal mechanisms already tasked with doing that work….
“Election Law in a Misaligned America”
The Ohio State Law Journal is hosting a symposium focused on Nick Stephanopoulos’s important new book Aligning Election Law. It’s next Friday, February 21. It’s got a great lineup of presenters, including Nick’s keynote and follow-up conversation with my Ohio State colleague Steve Huefner. I’m very much looking forward to the event. The agenda and registration link are here.