By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2025-03-25 21:45:41 | Updated at 2025-04-04 17:36:47
1 week ago
The top prosecutors on Mayor Eric Adams’ bribery case scrambled to distance themselves from their “self-serving” former boss Damian Williams — who they accused of using the historic prosecution to springboard his own “political aspirations,” according to new court exhibits obtained by The Post.
The unredacted exhibits in the Manhattan case show lead prosecutor Hagan Scotten and three colleagues in damage control over Williams’ op-ed in City & State, which Hizzoner’s attorneys said was a breach of courtroom ethics.
Williams’ piece — in which he ripped the “sad state of New York government” and portrayed Gotham as in “deep crisis and “being led with a broken ethical compass” — published in January, a month after he resigned as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York ahead of President Trump’s inauguration.
The exhibits show Scotten and the other prosecutors — Andrew Rohrbach, Celia Cohen and Derek Wikstrom — exchanging messages on how to respond to Adams camp’s push to get the case tossed because of Williams’ op-ed.
“Basically, I tried to [1] distance us from Damian enough that Ho and Trump will know we won’t approve of what he did, but not so much that we magnify the scandal,” Scotten wrote in an email to his colleagues, referring to Judge Dale Ho, who is overseeing the case.
“I know that none of us were motivated by Damian’s political aspirations, but I don’t think any of us know for sure what motivated Damian,” Wikstrom wrote in the email thread.
Trump’s Justice Department first tried on March 7 to file the court exhibits — which included the email exchanges — under seal, meaning they would not be viewed by the public. But Ho later ordered the communications to be released after The Post and The New York Times challenged the order.
The newly unsealed exhibits also show Danielle Sassoon, who recently resigned as Williams’ interim successor, was irked by his actions when he left office, including his creation of a glossy personal website touting his bevy of legal wins.
“I was personally disappointed in my predecessor’s self-serving actions after his departure,” Sassoon wrote in a never-sent draft of a letter to US Attorney Pam Bondi.
Sassoon also claimed that then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who was leaning toward ordering her to toss Adams’ case, gave her just 40 minutes to defend the sprawling bribery and wire fraud indictment.
Sassoon expressed concern about reaching a decision before Todd Blanche, the current deputy AG, took office, but Bove responded that he and Blanche were on the “same page” and that there was “no need to wait,” the draft letter said.
“I remain baffled by the urgent and superficial process by which this decision was reached,” Sassoon wrote, fighting for the case to continue.
Sassoon stepped down from the top post of the so-called “Sovereign District of New York” in February after Bove directed her to dismiss Adams’ case altogether.
Bove and Blanche were both Trump’s criminal attorneys at his Manhattan hush money trial before being moved into the lofty Justice Department posts.
The DOJ has said it wants to toss Adams’ case not because of the strength of the evidence against him, but because they say the case is hurting Adams’ ability to help with Trump’s immigration agenda. Ho has yet to rule on the motion to dismiss.
Meanwhile, the never-before-seen docs show the prosecutors trading texts about which language to use in the Adams’ indictment, which accuses him of pocketing travel perk bribes from Turks in exchange for political favors.
In one text about a draft of the first version of the indictment, Cohen wrote that “we did a lot of gymnastics around the influence point,” and added that “maybe making him the one exploiting the corrupt relationship works better.”
Adams’ lawyer Alex Spiro claimed Tuesday that the “gymnastics” line was evidence that Adams – who is also charged with soliciting illegal donations from Turkish nationals and committing wire fraud by taking phony matching funds from the city – has committed no crime.
“As I’ve said from the beginning, this bogus case that needed ‘gymnastics’ to find a crime — was based on ‘political motive’ and ‘ambition’, not facts or law,” Spiro said in a statement. “The more we learn about what was really going on behind the scenes, the clearer it is that Mayor Adams should have never been prosecuted in the first place.”
Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the case, resigned in February. Rohrbach, who helped convict Jeffrey Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell of sex trafficking teenage girls, and Cohen, who had worked on several mob cases in recent years, have been placed on leave and were marched out of the SDNY office earlier this month at Main Justice’s demand, sources told The Post.
Williams has not announced any plans to run for office and recently took a job at white-shoe law firm Paul Weiss. He could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday.
The entire prosecution team is subject to an internal investigation into their conduct, according to a February letter from DOJ’s Bove.
SDNY spokesperson Nick Biase declined to comment Tuesday on whether any of the prosecutors are specifically accused of wrongdoing.
“As a matter of policy, I cannot confirm or comment on personnel matters,” Biase said.
