Who is Danielle Sassoon? Top Manhattan prosecutor quits after DOJ orders Adams charges dropped

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan resigned Thursday after being ordered by the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Danielle Sassoon, a Republican who was interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced her resignation in an email to her staff, and the move was confirmed by a spokesperson for the office.

Only days earlier, a senior official in Republican President Donald Trump's Justice Department had directed New York prosecutors to scrap the case against the Democratic mayor, who was accused of accepting illegal campaign contributions and bribes of free or discounted travel from people who wanted to buy his influence.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said in a memo Monday that the case should be dismissed so Adams could aid Trump’s immigration crackdown and campaign for reelection free from facing criminal charges. 

Bove had directed that be done as soon as “practicable,” but there have been no public statements or actions by the prosecution team. On Wednesday, the new U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi, said she would “look into” why the case had yet to be dismissed. As of Thursday evening, the charges against Adams remained in place. He has pleaded not guilty.

In the email to her staff, Sassoon did not give a reason for her resignation. In the note, the contents of which were obtained by The Associated Press, she said she had just submitted her resignation to Bondi.

“As I told her, it has been my greatest honor to represent the United States and to pursue justice as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York," Sassoon wrote.

A Justice Department official told the AP that department officials did not ask Sassoon to resign. The department declined public comment on Sassoon's exit. A message seeking comment was left for Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro. A spokesperson for the mayor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The government's decision to end the Adams case because of political considerations, rather than the strength or weakness of the evidence, alarmed some career prosecutors who said it was a departure from long-standing norms.

The directive from Bove, a former Trump personal lawyer, was all the more remarkable because Bove had been a longtime prosecutor and supervisor in the Southern District and because department leaders are historically reluctant to intervene in cases where charges have been brought — particularly in an office as prestigious as that U.S. attorney's office.

Who is Danielle Sassoon?

According to the Department of Justice website, Sassoon graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 2008 and Yale Law School in 2011. After graduating, she served as a law clerk for J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Sassoon, who later served as a clerk for the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, was not the prosecutor who brought the case against Adams last year. That was then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who stepped down after Trump’s election victory in November.

Sassoon had only been tapped to serve as acting U.S. attorney on Jan. 21, the day after Trump took office. Her role was intended to be temporary. Trump in November nominated Jay Clayton, the former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, to the post, an appointment that must be confirmed by the Senate. That has not happened yet.

Sassoon joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 2016. She prosecuted murder and racketeering cases, including Lawrence Ray, who was found guilty of extortion, forced labor and sex trafficking in connection to the abuse and exploitation of his daughter's roommates and others at Sarah Lawrence College.

Considered by many in the field to be a highly talented and sharp lawyer, Sassoon is also member of the conservative Federalist Society.

In 2023 she helped lead the fraud prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. More recently, she had served as the office’s co-chief of criminal appeals.

She earned the FBI Director's Award for outstanding criminal investigation in 2023, and the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Top Prosecutor Award in 2023.

What is the Southern District of New York?

Established in 1789, the Southern District of New York is among the largest and most prominent prosecutor’s offices in the U.S., with a long track record of tackling Wall Street malfeasance, political corruption and international terrorism.

It has a tradition of independence from Washington, something that has earned it the nickname “the sovereign district of New York.” The SDNY is comprised of about 450 lawyers, special agents, paralegals and other professionals.

During Trump’s first term, the office prosecuted both the president’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his strategic adviser, Steve Bannon, in separate cases. Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance charges. Trump ended the federal fraud case against Bannon by pardoning him, though nearly identical charges were then brought by state prosecutors.

This is the second Justice Department tussle in five years between Washington and New York officials to result in a dramatic leadership turnover.

In 2020, William Barr, who served as one of Trump’s attorneys general during his first term pushed out Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, in a surprise nighttime announcement. Berman initially refused to resign his position, creating a brief standoff with Barr, but did so after an assurance that his investigations into allies of Trump would not be disturbed.

The SDNY encompasses the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, along with Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties in New York, according to the DOJ website.