On Friday, seven top prosecutors at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) resigned following an order by DOJ leadership to dismiss charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
NBC reported that prosecutors with the DOJ's vaunted Public Integrity Section (PIN) were all put in a room and told they had one hour to decide who would sign a motion to officially dismiss the charges against Adams, or else they would all be fired. Adams had been indicted by a grand jury last fall for allegedly taking bribes and illegal gifts from Turkish officials, and PIN had been preparing for Adams' trial later this year until the charges were abruptly dismissed.
In a Friday interview with MSNBC host Joy-Ann Reid, Harry Litman — the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania — said the "cascading series of resignations" was to be expected as walking away is "the only thing that an honorable career prosecutor or any prosecutor can do when confronted with an illegal order." He recalled the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal of the 1970s, when several top DOJ officials resigned when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Archibald Cox to drop a subpoena for the Watergate tapes.
"In the Saturday Night Massacre, it only went to three people. Here it goes all the way down and threatens to keep going forever," Litman said. "Almost unimaginably brutal and unprofessional treatment. One person who is about to retire steps up after they all consider, 'should we resign en masse,' and does the dirty deed. Of course, he's got a hard road to hoe in front of him, because this guy has to go in front of the court that has to decide, is this in the interest of justice?"
Litman explained that DOJ officials of all political stripes understand that PIN is "the crown jewel of the department," likening them to the "Navy SEALs" of the department. He stressed that prosecutors essentially had no choice to resign when faced with having to put aside the law and drop a case for political purposes.
"The most startling of all of this back-and-forth is that the acting deputy attorney general said, 'dismiss the case — but not because of the law or facts,' which is the lifeblood of the DOJ," Litman continued. "And that's what really sets up what was so corrupt and the aftermath."
During a Friday interview on Fox & Friends, Adams was joined by President Donald Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, who suggested that the charges against Adams were only dropped as part of an understanding that he would assist in the administration's immigration arrests in the Big Apple. Homan said that if Adams didn't play ball with the administration he would be "up his butt, demanding, 'where the hell is the agreement we made?'"
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