Mayor Adams’ lawyer asks federal judge to drop charges ‘with prejudice,’ citing leak of Sassoon letter
Alex Spiro, Mayor Eric Adams‘ criminal defense attorney, argued in a new Wednesday legal filing that Hizzoner’s corruption case should be dismissed “with prejudice” due to former Manhattan federal prosecutors leaking documents to the press that, he argues, has tarnished the mayor’s image with any jury pool.
In the Feb. 26 court papers, Spiro alleged that a Feb. 12 letter from former acting Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon to US Attorney General Pam Bondi — which accused Adams’ counsel and President Trump’s DOJ of engaging in a quid pro quo to have his charges dropped — constituted “prosecutorial misconduct.” Spiro and the DOJ have both fiercely denied any quid pro quo, and the mayor himself denied it under oath during a federal court hearing last week.
In her letter, Sassoon not only alleged that Spiro had offered Adams’ cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown to the DOJ in exchange for his legal reprieve but also revealed that federal prosecutors were on the verge of charging Adams with additional crimes. Sassoon resigned on Feb. 13.
The mayor’s attorney contended Sassoon’s letter, along with another from former Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Hagan Scotten, have caused “irreparable” damage to his presumption of innocence in the courtroom.
For those reasons, Spiro implored federal District Judge Dale Ho to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” meaning the DOJ is waving its right to reindict Adams on the same charges. That stands in contrast to the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case “without prejudice”, which gives federal prosecutors the ability to resurrect the case at any time.
“The most appropriate recourse is to dismiss this case now and do so with prejudice,” Spiro wrote. “The recent government leaks provide this court with an independent and more-than-sufficient basis to dismiss this prosecution due to the irreparable prejudice to Mayor Adams’s rights.”
The DOJ’s move to drop the charges without prejudice has created the perception that Trump is using the threat of resurrecting them to get Adams to cooperate with his deportation push.
Spiro’s filing comes after Judge Ho last week refused to dismiss the case immediately.
Instead, Ho appointed an independent attorney — Paul Clement of the law firm Clement & Murphy PLLC — to argue for keeping the case alive. The judge said Clement’s appointment was necessary because someone needs to argue on behalf of the charges, given that Trump’s DOJ and Spiro are in agreement about dropping them.
Adams, in a Wednesday morning Fox5 interview, repeated his claim that the case against him is weak and that former President Biden’s Justice Department was “weaponized.”
“I have a great deal of confidence in my legal team,” he said. “I stated from the start that I’ve done nothing wrong. The former president, President Biden, stated that his justice department was weaponized. President Trump stated it was weaponized.”
However, the DOJ explicitly said it is not dropping Adams’ charges based on the facts of the case.
In making his case, Spiro noted that Sassoon’s letter caused a cascade of bad news for Adams.
The attorney listed the resignation of four of Adams’ deputy mayors, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams calling on him to resign, and Gov. Kathy Hochul introducing legislation to place guardrails on his executive powers as fallout from the letter.
“The government’s decision not to heed that guidance predictably further eroded any presumption of innocence Mayor Adams had left in this ill-fated prosecution,” Spiro said. “It is impossible to understate the prejudice inflicted by the Feb. 12 letter.”
