President Trump on Friday shrugged off the resignations of top prosecutors involved in the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, suggesting they all would have been dismissed anyway in the coming days.
Trump was asked about the controversy that has surrounded the Adams case. The interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan and several other federal prosecutors resigned after the Justice Department directed them to dismiss the corruption charges against Adams.
“I don’t know about it,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Obviously, I’m not involved in that, but I would say this. If they had a problem — and these are mostly people from the previous administration, you understand. So they weren’t going to be there anyway. They were all going to be gone or dismissed…because what you do is you come in and you put new people in.
“So when you say resigned, they were gonna be gone anyway,” Trump continued. “But I know nothing about the individual case. I know that they didn’t feel it was much of the case. They also felt that it was unfair with the election.”
Trump compared Adams’s legal plight to his own, telling reporters he would “know that better than anybody.” Trump was indicted in four separate cases in 2023, including two federal cases.
Danielle Sassoon, who was the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, resigned from her post on Thursday afternoon. While Trump claimed Sassoon and others were from the previous administration, Sassoon had clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and had been appointed to her position by Trump’s team.
In her resignation letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Sassoon wrote that Adams’s lawyers “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”
Adams was charged last September under Damian Williams, who served as U.S. attorney for the district under President Biden. The indictment alleged he accepted and sought bribes throughout much of his political career, dating back to at least 2014 and continuing through his 2021 mayoral campaign and his tenure as mayor.
The mayor has railed against the charges and suggested they were politically motivated because of his criticism of the Biden administration’s immigration policy. The rhetoric echoed Trump, who had accused the Biden administration of indicting him for political reasons.
Adams appeared on “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning alongside Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar. Homan referenced an “agreement” during the appearance, suggesting he would pester Adams if the mayor did not follow through.
The mayor on Friday issued a statement denying there was any quid pro quo involved in the charges against him being dropped.
“I want to be crystal clear with New Yorkers: I never offered — nor did anyone offer on my behalf — any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never,” Adams said. “I am solely beholden to the 8.3 million New Yorkers that I represent and I will always put this city first.
“Now, we must put this difficult episode behind us so that trust can be restored, New York can move forward, and we can continue delivering for the people of this city,” he added.
