The three remaining federal prosecutors who brought criminal corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned in protest on Tuesday, saying the Justice Department pressured them to admit wrongdoing when they refused to drop the case, according to Reuters.
Celia V. Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom, three Assistant U.S. attorneys, were all previously placed on administrative leave after they refused orders by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's office to dismiss the charges against Adams, the news agency said.
"It is now clear that one of the preconditions you have placed on our returning to the office is that we must express regret and admit some wrongdoing," the three prosecutors wrote in their letter to Blanche. "We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none."
All five of the prosecutors who were originally involved in the prosecution out of the New York Office, including former Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, have resigned in protest, along with at least six career attorneys in Washington who were also pressured to drop the case.
The Justice Department's efforts to dismiss the Adams case started in February, sparking a wave of resignations and raising concerns among career prosecutors about whether the request was improperly motivated by politics, the news agency said.
Emil Bove, who at the time was serving as Acting Deputy Attorney General, told department officials he viewed the case as an example of "weaponization" of the justice system, and said it would also preclude the mayor from helping the administration with its immigration priorities.
Adams' case was dismissed by a federal judge on April 2.
