The Defense of Danielle Sassoon's Insubordination Is A Crock -- Her Letter Revealed The Reasons She Needed To Go

National enforcement priorities come from Main Justice, the change when administrations change, and local cases that undermine new priorities always get jettisoned.

Crack cocaine …

Deadbeat dads …

Felons in possession …

Abortion clinic protesters…

Criminal illegal aliens…

These are examples — most long forgotten and others subsequently repudiated — of national enforcement priorities established by the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump/Biden/Trump Administrations going back to my earliest days in DOJ more than 30 years ago. Every Administration comes into office with some aspect of criminal justice reform as part of its election mandate.

Every President names a new Attorney General, about 13 other Presidential appointees in the Department of Justice, and 94 new U.S. Attorneys — all of whom are charged with not just enforcing criminal law but also with advancing the new national priorities of the incoming Administration.

Sometimes those new enforcement priorities conflict with work that was being done by the prior Administration. In that circumstance, BARRIERS TO THOSE NEW PRIORITIES ARE SWEPT ASIDE. It happens every time the While House changes parties because the two parties have radically different views about what emphasis criminal law enforcement should have.

What Danielle Sassoon’s complaint comes down to is the decision made in Washington DC — Main Justice — that a SDNY case was a barrier to more effective enforcement of immigration laws. She does not need to agree with that, but her “authority” as an “Acting U.S. Attorney” does not extend to substituting her judgments for those of her superiors.

Let’s be clear about the sequence of events to the best we can determine them based on documents that have been made public.

January 31, 2025 — an in-person meeting was held in New York with Bove, Adams’ counsel, Sassoon, and “members of her staff” which I am presuming is a reference to the prosecutors who have handled the investigation and prosecution.

On February 5, 2025, Adams’ attorney sent a attacking the politicized nature of the investigation begun under the Biden appointed U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, Damien Williams.

On February 10, 2025, Sassoon received a memorandum from Bove directing her to move to dismiss the Adams’ indictment “without prejudice” — meaning it could be refiled at some point in the future if events warranted. To the best of my knowledge, this internal DOJ memorandum has not been made public.

On February 12, 2025, Sassoon write an 8 page letter to newly confirmed Attoreny General Pam Bondi, seeking a meeting with her to discuss the Bove memorandum and objecting to the direction given by him to dismiss the Adams case. Sassoon stated that she would have no choice but to resign from DOJ if the direction was not withdraw.

On February 13 — the next day — Bove accepted her resignation in a blistering 8 page letter of his own that addressed her allegations one-by-one.

Meeting; Adams attorney letter; Bove Memo; Sassoon letter; Bove reply — it is not the case that Sassoon wasn’t given a chance to make her case against the proposed course of action that she objected to.

The bottom line is as follows:

Sassoon:

“This is MY Case. MY case is the most important thing. MY team is convinced Adams is guilty. MY team doesn’t want to trade the case against Adams for his assistance on immigration enforcement. That is not important to US. WE are the Southern District of New York — WE do only important work. All other work comes after what is important to US.”

What I suspect put the SDNY team on edge from the start was the suggesting by Bove and Adams’ attorney that the investigation and indictment of Adams was another example of the Biden DOJ targeting political allies of Trump for political purposes. That would make them complicit at some level in the “lawfare” waged by the the Biden DOJ over several years, all with the goal of preventing him from returning to office. No

Sassoon’s letter goes to some lengths to deny this, noting that the investigation was open for a significant period of time

Here 8 page letter was just a temper-tantrum on paper — nothing more. And for those who have looked to it as some brave testimony to her integrity, let me make it quite clear — it is not legally accurate and she took some liberties with the citations she included. This is where having an expertise in the subject matter comes in handy — some things just jump off the page as “That’s not right.”

Consider these examples:

[T]he evidence against Adams proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed federal crimes.”

This is a given in EVERY case. If the evidence gathered by the prosecutor did not establish beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant’s guilt, then the case should not have been filed. So her comment about how she sees the evidence is meaningless — that is the baseline that is supposed to be true in every case in every district, and there is nothing compelling about Adams’ case based on that claim.

Here is another example — she states that the District Judge will likely not accept that trading Adams’ cooperation on immigration matters is a sufficient justification for dismissing the case.

“Nor will a Court likely find that an improper exchange is consistent with the public interest.”

As support for this proposition, she cites a single case from a district judge in New York decided almost 50 years ago. That’s because the case she cites is the ONLY case that says what she argues. If that case was so compelling it is legal reasoning, surely some other judge in the last half-century would have found a reason to issue a similar opinion. But the reason other judges has done so is because the legal point made by in the 50 year old case — that it is up to the Court to determine what is “consistent with the public interest” — is not as clear as Sassoon would like the public to think.

Let’s consider instead a decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, the Court that sits above the SDNY. U.S. v. Blaszczak, decided in 2022, tackles this very problem — the dismissal of an already-filed indictment prior to trial. The defendants had already gone to trial and been convicted, but a Supreme Court decision in a different case led to most of those convictions being reversed and sent back to the Appeals Court. After having convicted the defendant already, could the Government now move to dismiss the indictment under Rule 48(a)?

The Second Circuit took some time to explore decisions in other Circuit’s on this question, repeatedly returning to U.S. v. Smith, a Fourth Circuit case. Among the passages from Smith that are quoted by the Second Circuit are the following:

The court's discretion must be exercised in conformity with Rule 48(a) and the construction that the Supreme Court has placed on the rule. Because the discretion granted by Rule 48(a) involves the constitutional issue of the Separation of Powers Doctrine, a reviewing court must carefully scrutinize the district court's action. In Newman v. United States , 382 F.2d 479, 480 (D.C.Cir. 1967), Chief Justice Burger, then a circuit judge, wrote: "Few subjects are less adapted to judicial review than the exercise by the Executive of his discretion in deciding when and whether to institute criminal proceedings, or what precise charge shall be made, or whether to dismiss a proceeding once brought."

"Rule [48(a)] was not promulgated to shift absolute power from the Executive to the Judicial Branch. Rather, it was intended as a power to check power. The Executive remains the absolute judge of whether a prosecution should be initiated and the first and presumptively the best judge of whether a pending prosecution should be terminated. The exercise of its discretion with respect to the termination of pending prosecutions should not be judicially disturbed unless clearly contrary to manifest public interest. In this way, the essential function of each branch is synchronized to achieve a balance that serves both practical and constitutional values."

Naturally, Sassoon doesn’t reference any of this in her letter.

More from Smith:

The disposition of a government's motion to dismiss an indictment should be decided by determining whether the prosecutor acted in good faith at the time he moved for dismissal. A motion that is not motivated by bad faith is not clearly contrary to manifest public interest, and it must be granted .... [T]he trial court has little discretion in considering a government motion to dismiss made pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a). It must grant the motion absent a finding of bad faith or disservice to the public interest .... The disservice to the public interest must be found, if at all, in the motive of the prosecutor . Examples of disservice to the public interest include the prosecutor's acceptance of a bribe, personal dislike of the victim, and dissatisfaction with the jury impaneled.

Where is the “bad faith” in Sassoon’s description of events? The problem for her is that those with decision-making authority place a higher value on having Adams’ cooperation on immigration policy than on her team’s commitment to putting another scalp on the wall.

More from the Second Circuit:

The Smith court of appeals reversed the denial of the government's Rule 48(a) motion, concluding that the district court's "own assessment of the public interest" and "[w]eighing [of] these interests d[id] not give adequate recognition to the Executive in the context of the Separation of Powers Doctrine as it exercises its duty in good faith to take care that the laws are faithfully executed."

THAT addresses the question right there that Sassoon simply doesn’t understand. The issue of “manifest public interest” is not a question that belongs solely to the court — it also belongs to the Executive as well. The two might disagree — maybe with regard to Adams — but mere disagreement is not a sufficient basis to deny the motion to dismiss.

Sassoon and her team don’t have to like it — but the fact that they don’t like it is not a basis to deny the motion.

Final example for now — Surely, this isn’t a subject that has never before been raised in the history of federal prosecutions? Isn’t this subject covered somewhere in the Department of Justice Manual?

Well, as a matter of fact, it is: Sec. 9.27-600: ENTERING INTO NON-PROSECUTION AGREEMENTS IN RETURN FOR COOPERATION.

Functionally, this is an “immunity” agreement. It would typically be entered into prior to an indictment being filed. But I suspect that Mayor Adams was not given the option of entering into such an agreement before he was indicted in September 2024. What he had to offer — assistance on immigration enforcement —wasn’t something the Biden DOJ was interested in.

Without going too deep into the weeds, here are the basics for granting immunity — a non-prosecution agreement in exchange for cooperation.

In determining whether a person's cooperation may be necessary to the public interest, the attorney for the government should weigh all relevant considerations, including:

1. The importance of the investigation or prosecution to an effective program of law enforcement, or consideration of other national security or governmental interests;

2. The value of the person's cooperation to the investigation or prosecution;

3. The person's relative culpability in connection with the offense or offenses being investigated or prosecuted and his/her history with respect to criminal activity; and

4. The interests of any victims.

So, yes, cooperation agreements that include a promise of non-prosecution are provided for in the law and in the DOJ manual. Just because an indictment has been returned by a “duly constituted grand jury” — when I read phrases like that I know to not take the writer too seriously — is not a barrier to seeking to have the same indictment dismissed.

The strength of the evidence of guilt is IRRELEVANT to the determination. All cases are supposed to be strong when filed.

Sassoon’s letter was meant to play with suckers in the media. The number of terrible “takes” I heard from one source or another was comical. SDNY is a haven of NYC NeverTrumpers. Clearing out all middle management can’t happen fast enough.