Federal Prosecutor Resigns After Adams Case Dismissal Pressure Celia Cohen, a federal prosecutor in New York, resigned after being placed on leave and asked to apologize for prosecuting Eric Adams. The case was dismissed under pressure from the Justice Department. On March 7, 2025, Celia Cohen, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York (S.D.N.Y.), was at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan when a federal marshal arrived and requested to see her. She was led to a conference room where the marshal served her with a letter from Todd Blanche, then the Deputy Attorney General, informing her that she and Andrew Rohrbach, another S.D.N.Y. prosecutor, were being investigated and placed on administrative leave. After collecting her belongings, the marshal escorted her out of the building. Cohen, who has a reserved bearing, was deeply embarrassed. By the time she returned to her home in Westchester County, her shock had turned to despair. Background and Career AspirationsProsecutors at the S.D.N.Y., the nation’s most prestigious federal trial court, typically stay for five to seven years before moving to private law firms where they earn much higher salaries. Cohen had no such plans. Since her early twenties, when she spent a year as a paralegal at the Department of Justice, she had dreamed of becoming a prosecutor. After graduating from law school, mentors at the Manhattan law firm where she worked encouraged her to apply to become an Assistant U.S. Attorney at the S.D.N.Y. When Preet Bharara, then running the office, called to offer her a job, she exclaimed that it was the best day of her life. Cohen joined the S.D.N.Y. on the Monday after the 2016 Presidential election. She started in the General Crimes Unit before moving to Violent Organizations and Crime, and then to Public Corruption. Although the hours were long and the salary modest, she loved the job and planned to spend her career there.Eric Adams Case and Dismissal OrderShortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated for a second term, Emil Bove, the acting Deputy Attorney General, summoned S.D.N.Y. leaders to a meeting in Washington to discuss the pending trial of Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. In September 2024, Adams had been indicted for soliciting illegal campaign contributions and accepting bribes from Turkish officials; he has denied any wrongdoing. Cohen had been a prosecutor on the case. At the meeting, which she did not attend but soon learned about, Adams’s attorneys pressed for the case to be dropped, claiming it interfered with the Mayor’s ability to enforce Trump’s immigration policies. Ten days later, Bove issued a memorandum ordering the S.D.N.Y. to dismiss the charges. The problem was not the evidence, which Bove acknowledged the Justice Department had not re-evaluated; rather, the case was impeding Adams’s ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the prior Administration. The memo demanded dismissal without prejudice, meaning charges could later be reinstated, giving the White House immense leverage over Adams.Resignations and DOJ PressureTwo days later, Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. Attorney at the S.D.N.Y., outlined her objections to Bove’s order in a letter to Pam Bondi, then the Attorney General. Sassoon wrote that the appeal by Adams’s lawyers should be called out for what it is: an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal. She added that if the directive was not reconsidered, she was prepared to resign. Like many of Sassoon’s peers, Cohen hoped the letter would persuade the D.O.J. to change course. Sassoon was a member of the conservative Federalist Society, had clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and had been appointed by Trump. One might have thought these credentials would bolster her credibility with the White House. But Bove not only accepted Sassoon’s resignation; he scolded her for suggesting that she retained discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President. He soon transferred responsibility for the Adams case from New York to the D.O.J. headquarters in Washington, D.C.Cohen’s Decision to ResignCohen was dismayed by these developments, but she did not resign. The S.D.N.Y. still had hundreds of other important cases on its docket. The best way to continue serving the public, she believed, was by remaining in her job. Six weeks after she and Rohrbach were put on leave, the D.O.J. informed them that they could return, but only if they and other members of the S.D.N.Y. team apologized, declaring that they had acted wrongfully in prosecuting Adams and in failing to comply with the directive to dismiss the charges. Once she learned of these demands, Cohen knew that her career as a federal prosecutor was over. A few days later, she resigned.