Danielle R. Sassoon, the Southern District of New York’s interim United States attorney, was unequivocal: There was “concrete evidence” of crimes by Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, and his claims that his prosecution was politically motivated were meant to divert attention “from the evidence of his guilt.”
Ms. Sassoon’s vigorous defense of the corruption charges against Mr. Adams came last month in a letter filed in her name with the judge overseeing Mr. Adams’s case in Manhattan federal court. But senior Justice Department officials have raised the possibility of dropping the charges altogether and on Friday, Ms. Sassoon was in Washington to discuss the prospect.
Now Ms. Sassoon, who last month was placed in the top prosecutor’s post by the Trump administration, may face a crucial decision. The Southern District is the nation’s most prestigious U.S. attorney’s office, handling complex and challenging cases involving high finance, national security and public corruption. It has a reputation for independence and for fending off interference, particularly from officials in Washington.
Should Ms. Sassoon seek dismissal of the charges, she risks a potential uproar and even resignations among the office’s more than 200 assistant U.S. attorneys. Refusing such a directive could lead to another dismissal: Ms. Sassoon herself.
“It’s a defining moment for the office in terms of its independence and integrity,” said Jessica A. Roth, a former Southern District prosecutor who now teaches at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Dropping the charges without good cause, Professor Roth said, “would be totally demoralizing for the professionals who work there — to everybody who has been trained in a culture of following the facts and the law, without regard to political influence or favor.”
Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the Southern District, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the Justice Department.
Ms. Sassoon, 38, who joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 2016, is best known for the successful fraud prosecution and 2023 conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
She also prosecuted Lawrence V. Ray, who received 60 years in prison after being convicted in 2022 of extortion and sex trafficking related to his abuse of Sarah Lawrence College students.
A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, Ms. Sassoon clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, and is a member of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group. In November 2023, she was named co-chief of the Southern District’s criminal appeals unit.
When she was named to lead the Southern District last month, she filled a job that had been held by Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. until Mr. Williams stepped down in December.
Ms. Sassoon is expected to serve only briefly, until Mr. Trump’s selection for the post, Jay Clayton, a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, is confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Clayton served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during Mr. Trump’s first term.
But Ms. Sassoon has had a whirlwind debut. On Wednesday, she sat in the back of a courtroom, observing the sentencing of Robert Menendez, the former Democratic U.S. senator from New Jersey, who received 11 years in a corruption case. On Friday, she was in Washington, meeting with Justice Department officials and Mr. Adams’s lawyers to discuss dropping the mayor’s case, The New York Times reported.
Mr. Adams, who has been charged with bribery and fraud in the first prosecution of a sitting mayor in modern New York City history, is scheduled for trial in April. Mr. Adams has pleaded not guilty. Mr. Trump, himself a felon, said prosecutors had treated Mr. Adams “pretty unfairly” and that he was considering pardoning the mayor.
Under the law, the attorney general also can ask the presiding judge to dismiss the indictment. But if Ms. Sassoon agreed to seek dismissal of the charges, Mr. Trump could avoid the appearance of interference, and Mr. Adams, who has denied wrongdoing and is running for re-election, could argue that he was innocent all along.
Ms. Sassoon could also resign. Mary Jo White, who served as the Southern District’s U.S. attorney from 1993 to 2002, told The Times in an interview as she departed from the post that she had threatened to quit three times during her tenure.
She said that when she assumed the position, one of her long-admired predecessors, J. Edward Lumbard Jr., who was the U.S. attorney under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, told her, “Be prepared to resign on principle two or three times.”
Ms. White declined recently to comment on the issues in the Adams case.
Shira A. Scheindlin, a former Brooklyn federal prosecutor who later served more than two decades as a Manhattan federal judge, said any perception that the Southern District had dropped the Adams case at Mr. Trump’s behest could taint the entire office. It would, she said, diminish the credibility of prosecutors in the courtroom.
“The judge wouldn’t know who was speaking,” she said. “Are they merely a ventriloquist repeating what they are told to say by somebody sitting in D.C., or is this their own judgment?”
Daniel C. Richman, a former Southern District prosecutor who teaches criminal law at Columbia University, said the ripple effect could also extend to how jurors see cases and whether witnesses are willing to assist the government.
For someone who believes the office is “just carrying water for the administration,” Professor Richman said, “their cooperation could depend on their political preferences.”
Mr. Trump and his allies have long argued that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have mistreated conservatives for political reasons and have promised to bring them to heel. They favor ending the department’s independence, a norm reinforced by Watergate and the ensuing crisis that ended in the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.
The Southern District has long been referred to facetiously as the Sovereign District, an acknowledgment of its prized autonomy, its willingness to vie with other districts for important cases and its pre-eminence among the nation’s prosecutor’s offices. Its alumni have included former U.S. attorneys general, F.B.I. directors and countless federal judges.
Mr. Trump and his allies have tried once before to exert control over the Southern District and use it to pursue his critics. During his first term, the Justice Department pushed the office to open a criminal investigation of former Secretary of State John Kerry, according to the book “Holding the Line” by Geoffrey S. Berman, who was the Southern District’s U.S. attorney at the time.
Attorney General William P. Barr announced in June 2020 that Mr. Berman had resigned and that Mr. Clayton would replace him. But Mr. Berman denied he had stepped down, and was then fired by President Trump. Mr. Berman did not contest the action after he was assured that his deputy would lead the office.
In 2018, Southern District prosecutors investigated Mr. Trump’s involvement in a scheme that led to the conviction of his former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. (Mr. Trump, who was not charged, was identified by prosecutors in the case as “Individual-1”).
Last month, Mr. Trump referred disparagingly to the office in a post on Truth Social when he issued a pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road drug marketplace who was serving a life sentence in a case prosecuted by the Southern District.
“The scum that worked to convict him,” Mr. Trump said, “were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.”
But Mr. Trump has also relied on two of the office’s alumni as defense lawyers in several of his own criminal cases.
And after his re-election in November, he appointed the pair — Todd Blanche and Emil Bove — to high posts in the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump named Mr. Blanche, a former co-chief of the Southern District’s violent crimes unit, as deputy attorney general, the department’s No. 2 post. Mr. Bove, a former co-chief of the district’s terrorism and international narcotics unit, was the president’s choice for the No. 3 position.
Mr. Blanche’s post requires Senate confirmation, as does that of Mr. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, so Mr. Bove has run the Justice Department in the interim.
The presence of Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove at the Justice Department had been a comfort to some Southern District veterans, who believed the pair would be sympathetic to its tradition and culture of independence. The view was that they might also provide something of a buffer between the office and Mr. Trump’s political whims.
But in the early days of the new Trump administration, Mr. Bove has overseen the transfer of many longtime Justice Department officials to less desirable positions, and ordered the scrutiny of scores of F.B.I. agents. Under his watch, more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the federal criminal investigations into Mr. Trump — his former adversaries — have been fired.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.