Seventh prosecutor in Eric Adams case resigns and calls out Trump’s former lawyer in scathing letter – CNN
A federal prosecutor assigned to the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Friday in a blistering letter that accused top leaders at the Justice Department of looking for a “fool” to dismiss the criminal charges.
The attorney, Hagan Scotten, is the seventh person to resign over the calamitous effort to dismiss charges against Adams. Scotten was a line prosecutor on the case and had been placed on administrative leave Thursday for refusing to sign off on its dismissal.
In a letter to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, Scotten slammed what he called a “dismissal-with-leverage.”
“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,” Scotten told Bove, who is President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney.
“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,” Scotten added. “But it was never going to be me.”
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Scotten, a Harvard law graduate awarded two bronze stars as a troop commander in Iraq, is a seasoned prosecutor who has handled several corruption cases in New York including three associates of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He has also worked on other cases, against Bishop Lamor Whitehead, who is close to Adams and was convicted at trial on multiple counts of fraud. Scotten was also a clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts.
CNN has reached out to Scotten for comment.
The attorney lambasted Justice Department leadership’s justification for seeking to dismiss the case – that dropping the charges would allow Adams to devote his “full attention and resources” to combating illegal immigration and to his 2025 reelection campaign.
“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,”
Adams has pleaded not guilty to five federal charges. At the moment, the Justice Department has not filed its motion to dismiss the case against Adams.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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