As the Thursday Night Massacre Turns into Friday Morning

Hagen Scotten, the lead prosecutor on the Eric Adams case, has joined at least six other attorneys in leaving DOJ rather than carry out Trump’s alleged quid pro quo with Eric Adams.

His letter (posted by NYT) is one for the ages:

I have received correspondence indicating that I refused your order to move to dismiss the indictment against Eric Adams without prejudice, subject to certain conditions, including the express possibility of reinstatement of the indictment. That is not exactly correct. The U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon, never asked me to file such a motion, and I therefore never had an opportunity to refuse.

But I am entirely in agreement with her decision not to do so, for the reasons stated in her February 12, 2025 letter to the Attorney General. In short, the first justification for the motion—that Damian Williams’s role in the case somehow tainted a valid indictment supported by ample evidence, and pursued under four different U.S. attorneys—is so weak as to be transparently pretextual. The second justification is worse. No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.

There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake . Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration. I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.

Please consider this my resignation. It has been an honor to serve as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York

As NYT described, Scotten is a former Special Forces Officer and clerked for both Bret Kavanaugh and John Roberts.

Mr. Scotten served three combat tours in Iraq as a U.S. Army Special Forces Officer and earned two Bronze Stars. He graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court, and for Brett M. Kavanaugh before he, too, became an Supreme Court justice.

Earlier today, I perused the Murdoch press and there is nothing so far about this burgeoning scandal. I’ve seen no comment from Republican members of Congress, and frankly far too little from Democrats.

But this may already be teed up to go to SCOTUS. And when it does, some of the loudest voices will be those of conservative lawyers who refused to be party to an alleged quid pro quo.

Update: Brad Heath reports that DOJ finally found someone to sign the motion to dismiss.