Three prosecutors resign over Mayor Eric Adams corruption case after refusal to admit wrongdoing

Three Manhattan federal prosecutors on Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case resigned in protest Tuesday — and accused the Trump Justice Department of pressuring them to falsely “admit” that they had done something wrong.Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom, who had been placed on “administrative leave,” blasted DOJ Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for allegedly leaning on them to lie and “express regret” about the bribery case in order to get their jobs back.“We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none,” the three prosecutors wrote in a scathing one-page letter obtained by Politico.The resignations come after the judge in Adams’ case, Dale Ho, emphasized in a recent ruling that there was not a shred of evidence that any of them did anything wrong.“The record before the Court indicates that the U.S.Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York prosecutors who worked on this case followed all appropriate Justice Department guidelines.

There is no evidence —zero— that they had any improper motives,” the judge wrote.Trump’s DOJ pushed in April to kill Adams’ corruption case in an abrupt move that the former head of the SDNY ripped as a “quid pro quo” arrangement in which Adams agreed to cater to Trump’s demands on immigration policy in exchange for having his case dropped.The move was led by top DOJ officials Blanche and Emil Bove, who formerly were Trump’s criminal defense lawyers.Adams has denied wrongdoing.An SDNY spokesman declined to comment....