Who is Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney in New York who quit amid directive to drop Eric Adams corruption case?
By Kaanita Iyer, CNN
(CNN) — Danielle Sassoon, who resigned from her position as Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, oversaw all investigations into federal crimes in the Southern District of New York, including the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams that the Trump administration has directed be dropped.
Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the district, wrote in her resignation letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi that the New York mayor’s attorneys “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo” to help Trump on immigration if the case was dropped.
“I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal,” Sassoon wrote.
In the first prosecution of a sitting mayor in the city’s modern history, the Justice Department last year brought public corruption charges against Adams, a Democrat. He pleaded not guilty, and the case was set to go to trial this spring.
Here is what we know about Sassoon.
Climbing up the Justice Department ranks
After graduating from Harvard College, Sassoon attended Yale Law School, graduating in 2011. She went on to clerk for federal appellate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative.
She was a litigation lawyer at a Washington law firm and an adjunct professor at New York University law school, where she taught a seminar on the Supreme Court, according to The Federalist Society, a conservative legal group where she is listed as a contributor.
Sassoon joined the Southern District of New York as an assistant US attorney in 2016, according to her Justice Department bio. She was assigned to the violent and organized crime unit and tasked with trying murder and racketeering cases, according to the bio. Sassoon also served on the securities and commodities fraud task force and as co-chief of criminal appeals.
Sassoon took on the role of acting US attorney last month.
Other high-profile cases
Sassoon has been involved in other high-profile cases in recent years.
In 2022, Sassoon prosecuted Lawrence Ray, who had lived in his daughter’s Sarah Lawrence College dorm room, and was ultimately convicted of sex trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion and money laundering after less than a day of jury deliberations. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
She also led the government’s cross-examination during the 2023 trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, who was found guilty of defrauding customers and investors in his failed crypto exchange FTX and sentenced to 25 years.
CNN’s Kara Scannell, Hannah Rabinowitz, Allison Morrow, Kristina Sgueglia and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.
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