Judge weighs DOJ request to drop Adams corruption case amid Trump quid pro quo allegations – National & International News – MON 17Feb2025
Judge weighs DOJ request to drop Adams corruption case amid Trump quid pro quo allegations.
Weeks after deadly DC crash, DOGE terminates “hundreds” of flight safety workers.
Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons workers fired by DOGE.
Judge weighs DOJ request to drop Adams corruption case amid Trump quid pro quo allegations
Last week, 7 federal prosecutors in New York and Washington resigned their posts rather than follow through with a request to drop corruption charges against Democratic New York Mayor Eric Adams. The request came from acting deputy Attorney General Emile Bove in what the prosecutors allege was a corrupt quid pro with the Trump administration.
Last year, Adams was charged with bribery, fraud, soliciting foreign campaign donations, and conspiracy in a scheme involving the Turkish government. Prosecutors were reportedly preparing a superseding indictment with even more charges.
Ultimately, Bove himself signed the letter to the presiding judge, Dale Ho, requesting that the charges be dropped, without prejudice (meaning the case could be brought again in future).
Judge Ho will now have to decide whether to honor or reject the DOJ’s request. Ho has not responded yet to the request. He could potentially hold a hearing to hear arguments. If Ho rejects the DOJ’s request, his decision will almost certainly be appealed.
Meanwhile, New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has so far not moved to remove Adams from office, despite growing pressure to do so
Quid pro quo
One of the prosecutors on the case, Danielle Sassoon, was appointed by Trump just a few weeks ago to serve as the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York. Sassoon was among those who resigned in protest of Bove’s request to drop the Adams case. She also wrote an eight-page letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi containing serious charges of high-level corruption.
Sassoon described a meeting in Washington attended by Mr. Bove, and Mayor Adams’ lawyers, Sassoon herself and other prosecutors. During the meeting, Sassoon says, Adams’ attorneys “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo” -namely that Adams would assist Trump with his immigration enforcement agenda only if the case were dismissed.
Sassoon also claims that Bove admonished a member of her team for taking notes during this meeting, and ordered those notes confiscated at the end of the meeting.
Weeks after deadly DC crash, DOGE terminates “hundreds” of flight safety workers
According to the professional aviation safety specialists (PASS) union, which represents public sector workers in flight safety, “several hundred” of their members received termination notices on Friday. This followed an order from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to sack all probationary employees in the federal government.
In this case, probationary refers to people who only have a few years on the job and do not yet have civil service protections. Employees who are promoted within an agency also have a probationary period after entering their new position.
This order does not affect air traffic controllers themselves, which is fortunate since there is a nationwide shortage of about 3000 ATC workers. However, the order does apply to engineers and technicians who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure.
At the time of the recent mid-air collision between a military Blackhawk helicopter and a regional jet at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, a single air traffic controller was managing both helicopter traffic and directing runway traffic.
In a statement, PASS says that “staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs. To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety”.
Trump admin tries to rehire nuclear weapons workers fired by DOGE
In further fallout from DOGE’s probationary employees order, about 350 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration were also fired on Friday. The NNSA, which is part of the Department of energy, manages the US nuclear weapons stockpile.
About 30% of these layoffs were at the Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, which reassembles nuclear warheads.
The very same day they were fired, NNSA’s director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings of all the 28 of the agency’s fired staff members.
The episode is reminiscent of an incident that took place when Musk took over Twitter in 2022. After firing over 6,000 workers his first day at the company, Musk then had to rehire many of them after cascading failures on the platform.
