Manhattan federal prosecutors worked for weeks behind the scenes to push back on allegations from Mayor Eric Adams’ legal team that former U.S. Attorney Damian Williams had brought corruption charges against Adams for political reasons.
Internal emails and texts between Southern District of New York prosecutors disclosed in a Tuesday court filing reveal a tense debate on how to address the fallout from a Jan. 16 op-ed Williams published after resigning, asserting that New York City was being led “with a broken ethical compass.”
The federal investigation of Adams started long before Williams took the helm at Southern District and continued after he left in December, but Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, charged that the essay and the fact that Williams had established his own website demonstrated that Williams had brought the case against Adams last fall merely to further his budding political ambitions.
The internal messages show prosecutors disagreeing with Spiro’s claim.
“I know that none of us were motivated by Damian’s political aspirations but I don’t think any of us know for sure what motivated Damian,” Derek Wikstrom, one of the prosecutors on the Adams case, wrote to his colleagues Jan. 20. He advocated fighting back by asserting Spiro’s accusations needed to be taken with a “grain of salt.”
The battle over Williams’ op-ed continued as the Trump Department of Justice informed Williams’ successor, Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, of its intent to dismiss the bribery and campaign finance fraud case against the mayor. Then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, without assessing the merits of the indictment, filed a motion to dismiss the case on Feb. 14, asserting that it was hindering the mayor’s ability to assist the Trump administration in its signature effort to deport undocumented individuals.
That request is still pending before Manhattan Federal Judge Dale Ho.
Days after the op-ed appeared in City & State, prosecutor Hagan Scotten wrote to his colleagues on the case, “I tried to (1) distance us from Damian enough that Ho and Trump will know we don’t approve of what he did but not so much that we magnify the scandal.”
This month Bove cited clipped portions of these emails and texts in a filing urging Judge Dale Ho to dismiss the case, arguing that what he described as Williams’ political ambitions in bringing the charges were another reason to approve the motion. He included a text from one prosecutor to another with an offhand remark “You think it’s time to take a seat on the bench? lol.” A week later the prosecutor, Scotten, replied, “Got to convict Adams before I can think about anything else.”
Bove requested that the bulk of the communications remain under seal. Ho ordered him to release the mostly unredacted back-and-forth by Tuesday, which made clear the discussion about convicting Adams was made as informal banter, with no other communications implicating Scotten’s motivations. Scotten later resigned after refusing Bove’s orders to move to toss the case.
The broader material released Tuesday included a Feb. 11 memo from Sassoon to Attorney General Pamela Bondi, which was not previously public, calling the motion to dismiss in exchange for Adams’ cooperation on immigration a “corrupt bargain.”
“Adams has effectively argued and Mr. Bove appears prepared to concede that Adams should receive leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position, necessarily meaning that a less powerful American citizen would be treated more harshly,” she wrote.
The next day Sassoon wrote a letter to Bondi, alleging that during one meeting with Bove, Adams’ lawyers were agreeing to an improper quid pro quo by stating Adams could only cooperate with the administration in immigration if the case were dismissed. Adams and Spiro have denied the allegations of quid pro quo.
Sassoon resigned the day after that, rather than follow the Justice Department orders to drop the case against Adams.
The new material released Tuesday focused much attention on Williams after he left the Southern District.
A March 7 letter from the prosecutors in the Adams case to the judge minimized the import of Williams actions. The letter contained internal comments by the four prosecutors, including one stating, “A US attorney could order an investigation all on his own, even if we know DW didn’t do that here.”
Other comments debated whether to advise the judge to “reject” Spiro’s accusations or just take them with a “grain of salt.”
“I don’t want to say ‘rejected’ because I don’t want to ask anyone to reject the theory that [Williams] had a political motive in bringing the case. Seems pretty plausible to me. ‘Grain of salt’ was an attempt to capture the idea that [Adams] doesn’t have much credibility here.”
Another comment took a different stance, stating, “We want the judge and everyone else to believe us when we say DW didn’t cause this prosecution.”
Hours after the material was filed, the mayor’s lawyer, Spiro, issued a statement repeating his argument that “This bogus case that needed ‘gymnastics’ to find a crime – was based on ‘political motive’ and ‘ambition’, not facts or law. The more we learn about what was really going on behind the scenes, the clearer it is that Mayor Adams should have never been prosecuted in the first place.”
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