1

Accepting Sassoon’s resignation, Bove adopts an aggressive tone from the start in response to her defiance of his orders. He says she “lost sight of the oath” she had taken by thinking she can make her own decisions independent of President Trump and the attorney general’s priorities. Bove reiterates that the Adams case was “a politically motivated prosecution” — after Sassoon accused him of dropping it for political reasons.

2

Bove says the line prosecutors in the case, who he previously praised, will now be investigated because they also refused to obey his orders, and will be put on leave. They will continue to be paid but can’t go into federal officers or use their laptops. Sassoon’s conduct will also be evaluated, he says.

3

The Adams case is being removed from the U.S. attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York and being transferred to Washington, where it will be dismissed, Bove writes. On the day he sent this letter, five prosecutors overseeing the Public Integrity unit there also resigned rather than drop the case.

4

Bove says he exhaustively reviewed the case and considered the issues before ordering it dropped, responding to Sassoon’s claims in her own letter that the process was rushed and that she was left out of it.

5

This “weaponization” finding Bove refers to here seems ripped from Trump’s own rhetoric about the indictments brought against him, which he has said without evidence were political. Similarly, there is no evidence that has been made public to support Bove’s finding that the Adams case was brought for political reasons.

6

Bove claims that the charging of Adams, after a three-year investigation, was “rushed” before last year’s presidential election because the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, hoped to curry favor with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate. There is no public evidence of that, and Sassoon has said Williams’s involvement in the Adams case was “minimal.”

7

Bove, sounding more like a defense lawyer for Adams than a top Justice Department official, demeans the process by which a grand jury indicted the mayor, saying they had done so based on a “one-sided” and “partial” presentation of the evidence.

8

Bove again turns nasty here, calling Sassoon’s discussion of the values of Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked, as “dubious.” He then finds a quote from Scalia to support his own argument about political weaponization.

9

In his order, Bove praised the work of line prosecutors, but now calls the Southern District prosecutors’ work “extremely problematic” and then accuses them of “insubordination.”

10

Bove defends his argument that Adams can’t be prosecuted because it inhibits his cooperation with Trump’s immigration crackdown, calling it an “unacceptable” situation that “directly endangers the lives of millions of New Yorkers.”

11

Bove denies Sassoon’s accusation that he engaged in a quid pro quo to drop the Adams case in exchange for the mayor’s help with Trump’s immigration crackdown.

12

Bove, who previously said he was not ordering the case dropped based on the actual evidence, now does attack the strength of the case, saying it was based on “extremely aggressive” factual and legal theories. Though he has said the case could be revived later, the defense would surely seize on these statements if prosecutors attempted to do so.

13

Bove says the investigation of the prosecutors on the case will examine “questionable” moves that their team made. He suggests that this team had duplicitously tried to bait Adams into making incriminating statements before charging him.

14

Matthew Podolsky is the prosecutor taking over for Sassoon now. Hagan Scotten and Derek Wikstrom were the line prosecutors on the case, who have now been placed on leave and are under investigation.