Harry Litman - Thursday Night Massacre
The resignations we have seen in the last 24 hours of high-ranking Department of Justice officials constitute the biggest scandal to date facing the Trump administration.
The episode, moreover, is developing in nightmarish ways for Acting Deputy Attorney General Bove and the Department. And it’s not going away soon.
The ugly episode started when Bove sent a remarkable letter to the Acting United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon. The letter directed Sassoon to move the court to dismiss the charges that her office had previously brought against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
The Adams case turns on over $100,000 worth of improper gratuities and goodies that Adams took. The facts are complicated and involve Turkish actors and events before Adams was elected. But that's not the real story here. The huge headline is that in ordering them to drop the case, Deputy Attorney General Bove wrote, "I have not in any way based this on the evidence in the case or any legal theories." In other words, not the facts and not the law—the absolute constitutive elements of any prosecution or dismissal by the Department of Justice.
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/thursday-night-massacre