Top Justice Department officials issued an extraordinary attack on Friday on the Manhattan prosecutors who brought the federal corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, releasing a selection of their internal messages in a further attempt to discredit the case.
The attack came in an evening court filing from the two officials, Todd Blanche and Emil Bove III. Using emails, texts and other messages sent by the case’s lead prosecutor and his colleagues, the officials sought to paint the former U.S. attorney who brought the case as politically motivated and other prosecutors as hypocrites.
The filing came as part of an effort by Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove to persuade a judge to drop the case against Mr. Adams. A motion to dismiss the charges is pending before the judge, Dale E. Ho.
The former prosecutors’ messages were quoted only in fragments in the court filing, while the full text of the communications was filed under seal, making it impossible to determine the context in which they were sent — and in some cases their meaning.
Much of the attack was focused on the former U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, who resigned in December. Mr. Bove, in ordering Manhattan prosecutors to dismiss their case, argued that Mr. Williams’s actions had “threatened the integrity of the proceedings.”
The actions to which he was referring included a January opinion article Mr. Williams published in which he wrote that the city was “being led with a broken ethical compass.” Mr. Williams also created a website highlighting his achievements, prompting speculation that he was preparing to embark on a political campaign.
A number of the internal messages included in the Justice Department’s filing appeared to be part of a discussion about Mr. Williams’s actions, which were seized upon by the mayor’s defense team. In a Jan. 22 letter to the judge in the case, the Manhattan prosecutors wrote that “whatever may be said of the article” by Mr. Williams, it did not justify dismissing the case. They also noted that the investigation began before his tenure.
In their filing Friday, Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove tried to show that while the Manhattan prosecutors were publicly defending the case against Mr. Adams, they might have privately questioned their former boss’s motives.
On Jan. 19, according to the Justice Department’s Friday filing, the lead prosecutor in the case against Mr. Adams, Hagan Scotten, circulated a draft of a letter about Mr. Williams’s actions that he planned to send to the judge in the case. Mr. Scotten was identified in the filing as “AUSA-1.”
The court filing then lays out a series of quotes that it attributes to the prosecutors commenting on the draft, exchanges that are shot through with ellipses and brackets that make it impossible to understand the full discussion.
Mr. Scotten, forwarding the draft to his colleagues, wrote that he had tried to “distance us” from Mr. Williams so that the judge and “Trump will know we don’t approve of what he did, but not so much that we magnify the scandal,” according to the Justice Department’s Friday filing.
The filing said that in one comment on the draft letter, Mr. Scotten wrote that he didn’t want to ask anyone to reject the theory that Mr. Williams “had a political motive in bringing this case. Seems pretty plausible to me.” It was unclear whether Mr. Scotten meant that he personally thought Mr. Williams might have had a political motive, or that others might find the argument plausible.
Mr. Scotten resigned last month rather than sign on to the Justice Department’s efforts to dismiss the case. In his resignation letter, he defended the prosecution’s integrity, writing that only “a fool” or “a coward” would agree to file a motion to drop the case. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Williams declined to comment on the Justice Department’s Friday filing.
Alex Spiro and William A. Burck, lawyers for Mr. Adams, wrote, “We have said all along this was a political hit job masquerading as a prosecution — the prosecutors’ own words now reveal they thought the decision to prosecute this case likely was politically motivated.”
Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove also targeted Danielle R. Sassoon, the former interim U.S. attorney who also resigned rather than agreeing to seek the dismissal of the indictment.
In a letter offering her resignation, Ms. Sassoon said that “the charges against Adams are serious and supported by fact and law.” She wrote that it was not her role “to defend Mr. Williams’s motives or conduct,” but added that “Mr. Williams’s conduct since leaving government service cannot justify dismissal here.”
Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove wrote on Friday that Ms. Sassoon had drafted a letter in which she said she was “disappointed” in Mr. Williams’s actions after his departure.
Ms. Sassoon could not be reached for comment.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.