April 23 (UPI) — Three more federal prosecutors who worked on the case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams have resigned, stating that they will not confess to the Trump administration wrongdoing by refusing to dismiss the prosecution.
Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom, all assistant U.S. attorneys in the Justice Department’s Manhattan office, resigned Tuesday in an email addressed to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, The New York Times reported.
The three prosecutors had been placed on administrative leave earlier this year after they, and several others, including Danielle Sassoon, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, refused the Justice Department’s demand to drop the corruption case against the Democratic mayor of New York City.
In their resignation letter, which was obtained by The Times, Cohen, Rohrbach and Wikstrom said they had come to understand that a precondition for their return to work “is that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing by the Office in connection with the refusal to move to dismiss the case.”
“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” they said.
The trio said they have served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, advancing their priorities while pursuing justice.
“Now, the Department has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington. This is wrong.”
“There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons,” they said.
“We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs. We resign.”
At least 11 prosecutors have now resigned over the dismissal of charges against Adams.
Federal prosecutors charged Adams in late September with five counts of accepting bribes and campaign contributions from foreign nationals and Turkish government officials.
However, Trump, a convicted felon, and Adams have seemingly formed a relationship in recent months. The New York mayor became a critic of the Biden administration’s policies in the final months of President Joe Biden’s presidency, while vowing not to criticize Trump, whose Jan. 20 inauguration he attended.
In February, the Justice Department moved to have Adams’ case dismissed, stating it interferes with the mayor’s ability to execute Trump administration immigration policies and his re-election campaign, while suggesting it was the product of the Biden’s administration’s alleged weaponization of the office.
Sassoon and several other prosecutors at the Southern District of New York resigned days later when ordered to end the corruption case, describing the Trump administration’s move as a quid pro quo that would see the charges against Adams dropped in exchange for his help in forwarding Justice Department priorities.
Early this month, a judge dismissed the charges against Adams but chastised the Justice Department for seeking to do so in exchange for the mayor’s compliance with Trump administration immigration policies.
In Judge Dale Ho’s order, he noted that Adams’s approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to operate at the Rikers Island Jail Complex came while he was still facing charges and “smacks of a bargain: dismissal of the indictment in exchange for immigration policy concessions.”
On Tuesday, a New York state judge prohibited the mayor from allowing ICE agents to operate on Rikers ahead of a hearing scheduled for later this week.
