The letter below is written by Hagan Scotten, an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote to Emil Bove, acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General to quit in protest over Pam Bondi’s order to dismiss New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ bribery case. His letter came one day after Danielle Sassoon, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned, refusing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s directive to drop the case. A grand jury indicted Adams but Bondi sought to dismiss his charges in return for a pledge by Adams to assist Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda in NYC.
We offer their letters (Sassoon’s is linked above, with additional context) to highlight those acting with integrity to defeat the attempted authoritarian takeover by the Musk/Trump regime. While those complying with the authoritarians deserve scorn, it’s even more important to celebrate and amplify the growing number of people making personal sacrifices to defend our country from the saboteurs within.
February 12, 2025
Mr. 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.
In short, the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys—is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. 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.
There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal.
But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens,much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then 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.
Please consider this my resignation. It has been an honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.
Yours truly,Hagan Scotten
Assistant United States Attorney