Hagan Scotten Slams Emil Bove

If you thought Danielle Sassoon's resignation letter from the Southern District of NY over the Eric Adams dismissal was fire, wait until you read Hagan Scotten's.

I recently wrote about the letter from SDNY Acting US Attorney Danielle Sassoon’s 8-page bombshell letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi about Emil Bove’s ridiculous justifications for dismissing the bribery and fraud charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Shortly after that, another prosecutor - one of seven to resign in protest - published a one-page resignation letter that doesn’t pull a single punch.

Here it is in its entirety:

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.

First, it’s important to note that Mr. Scotten clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh - so he’s not exactly the marxist radical left liberal. He’s a line prosecutor with a job, and a duty to uphold the law.

In his letter, when he said “I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion,” he was envisioning a reality where Emil Bove would do what Nixon did during the Saturday Night Massacre and simply go down the line of attorneys until he found someone foolish and cowardly enough to submit the rule 48(a) motion to dismiss the charges against Eric Adams without prejudice. But what happened was far more sinister.

Emil Bove put all the Public Integrity Section attorneys in a room, told them they had an hour to figure out who would file his idiotic and politically weaponized motion, and said that if they didn’t identify someone to file it, he would fire them all.

That’s when Ed Sullivan volunteered. Not because he’s a fool or a coward - but because he wanted to spare his colleagues from termination. Some could argue that they all should have resigned, leaving fewer adults in the room. So Ed Sullivan signed the motion submitted by Emil Bove.

However, Emil Bove once again made a fatal mistake, and in the dismissal motion - took full responsibility for the motion to dismiss. That will undoubtedly raise more red flags for the judge, who will have to grant permission to drop the charges. This could kick off a lengthy and embarrassing litigation process not unlike the one that happened in the Mike Flynn case. Trump eventually stopped that litigation by simply pardoning Flynn, something that could happen here.

But why did Emil Bove even need a career prosecutor like Ed Sullivan to sign his motion if he was going to take responsibility for the dismissal? I’m only speculating, but I assume it was a loyalty test. We will see whether the judge calls for evidentiary hearings, or whether Trump will simply pardon Adams to avoid the litigation. But, if Trump pardons Adams, the DoJ and Trump administration will no longer have the “carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again” to get Adams to carry out his political and likely illegal immigration policies in New York.

And as Andrew McCabe and I discuss in the Unjustified podcast that comes out tomorrow morning - there are only two scenarios in this quid pro quo between Bove and Adams - and both are corrupt. Either Adams agrees with the trump immigration policies and threatened to refuse to follow them in exchange for leniency, or Adams disagrees with the immigration policies and promised to carry out something he disagrees with in exchange for leniency. The judge will explore that corruption unless and until Trump pardons him.

Regardless, Governor Kathy Hochul should remove Adams as Mayor. He is clearly compromised, and as we learned in Danielle Sassoon’s letter, he was about to be hit with superseding charges for a conspiracy to obstruct justice. You can contact Governor Hochul at 1-518-474-8390, or by using this form.

As usual with this administration, there could be other scenarios that I haven’t thought of, and I will keep you posted both here and on the Unjustified podcast.

~AG