The End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution : Holier-Than-Thou Federal Prosecutors

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  • Since my post a few days ago about the demise of the Eric Adams prosecution, controversy has continued to swirl around the matter.

  • On the side supporting the action of the Trump/Bondi Justice Department, several new voices have emerged to join what were previously the lonely cries of a handful of people like myself and Josh Blackman. These new voices include James Copland and Rafael Mangual (of the Manhattan Institute), writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 18; and Alan Dershowitz in a column in the New York Post on February 19.

  • On the other side of the argument, an ex-colleague of mine sends me a copy of an “open letter” dated February 17, and signed by a gigantic list of well over 1000 former federal prosecutors. This letter essentially adopts the arguments set forth in the resignation letter of ex-SDNY US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, including echoing some of her language.

  • A fair description is that these guys adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, claiming to be wholly pure and above politics and devoted only to the “facts and law.”

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On The Sudden End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution

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  • Back in September, DOJ prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges.

  • The indictment came shortly before the election, and at a time when Adams was making noises that he would cooperate with a new President Trump’s efforts to step up enforcement of the immigration laws. At the time I had two posts on the subject, one on September 26 titled “Who Is More Corrupt, Eric Adams or the Biden/Harris DOJ/FBI?”, and the second on September 27 titled “More On The Adams Indictment.” My general comment then was that the indictment was “shockingly thin,” and I concluded (in the September 26 post):

  • At this point, it is a safe bet that anything the DOJ/FBI is doing in the political sphere is corrupt. Adams may well also be a little corrupt, but nothing remotely at their level.

  • A few days ago, on February 11, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove instructed the SDNY to dismiss the Adams indictment. The next day, February 12, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one Danielle Sassoon, responded with a rather extraordinary 8 page single-spaced letter of resignation, addressed to new Attorney General Pam Bondi.

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How Much Of This Has Been Paid For By The U.S. Taxpayer?

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  • Elon Musk and the DOGE crew are now a few weeks into their work, and the examples of brazen waste, fraud, and misuse of taxpayer funds are exploding forth like a gusher.

  • At the first agency targeted, USAID, an early revelation was that much of the left-wing press has been quietly underwritten by the taxpayers in the form of hundreds of phony premium-priced subscriptions to such outlets as The New York Times, Associated Press, Politico, and Reuters.

  • On February 5, the White House put out a document titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” listing a dozen or so categories of abusive payments, including “Millions to EcoHealth Alliance — which was involved in research at the Wuhan lab . . . Hundreds of thousands of meals that went to al Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria . . . Hundreds of millions of dollars to fund . . . the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan, benefiting the Taliban. . . .”

  • These are just examples. What other pet causes and activities of the Left have been getting paid for by USAID, and more broadly, by other various federal agencies?

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What's Coming For Academia

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  • It’s only two weeks into the new Trump administration, and we’re seeing an incredible sea change start in the federal government.

  • In his first campaign, Trump promised to “drain the swamp,” and then when he took office he barely got started on the project during a full four year term. Maybe he was too distracted by constant investigations, lawfare, “Russia! Russia! Russia!” and the like. But this time it’s much different.

  • The big news of the past day or two is the beginning of purges at DOJ, the FBI, and USAID. Those thoroughly corrupt institutions are very good places to start in these early weeks. But they are barely the tip of the iceberg of corrupt institutions ripe for upending.

  • One place that is about to get hit by the whirlwind is academia.

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The Most Under-Reported Story Of The Biden Presidency

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  • What was the most under-reported news story during the Biden presidency?

  • In the last week or so, there has been a sudden burst of recognition of the extent to which Democrats and the media worked together to cover up Biden’s progressing cognitive decline. One media figure after another has come forward to call this the “most under-reported” story of the last year or several years. Some examples among many include: CBS correspondent Jan Crawford on December 30 (“That [the most under-reported story] would be, to me, Joe Biden's obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in a televised debate"); Rolling Stone, December 30 (“Matt Yglesias, Josh Barro, and Mehdi Hasan regret failing to acknowledge Biden’s cognitive decline sooner — and its impact on the 2024 election.”); MSN, January 4 (“Media facing backlash for reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline.”)

  • I agree that this was a very big and very under-reported story during the Biden presidency. But was it the biggest? Not to me.

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Get Rid Of Wray Immediately

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  • When a new President comes into office, there is quite properly a changing of the guard.

  • The people have voted for new policies. The norm is that all the Cabinet Secretaries, and all other Cabinet-level officials (like the heads of EPA, NSA and NASA, and the UN Ambassador) leave office, to be replaced by appointees of the new guy.

  • But there are exceptions. The two most notable are the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the Director of the FBI.

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