By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 10/5/2026
Category: Criminal Courts / Prosecutorial Accountability / Government Misconduct / New York City
NEW YORK CITY, NY – Federal prosecutors who worked on the corruption case against former Mayor Eric Adams say the Justice Department made an admission of wrongdoing a condition of returning them to the Southern District of New York, according to a newly published investigation into the department’s attorney exodus.
Celia Cohen and Andrew Rohrbach were put on administrative leave after refusing to support the department’s effort to end the Adams prosecution. Cohen told The New Yorker that officials later offered a path back only if the prosecutors apologized and declared that the case should not have been brought.
Cohen, Rohrbach and prosecutor Derek Wikstrom refused. In an April 2025 resignation letter, they wrote that they would not confess wrongdoing where there was none and accused department leadership of putting obedience above legal and ethical duties.
Their account matters beyond one dismissed indictment. Federal prosecutors exercise enormous power over arrests, plea negotiations and punishment. If career lawyers can be forced to disavow a case for political reasons, the public cannot know whether charging decisions reflect evidence or allegiance.
The Adams case alleged bribery, fraud and illegal campaign contributions tied to foreign interests. Adams pleaded not guilty and denied wrongdoing. The Justice Department later ordered prosecutors to seek dismissal, saying the case interfered with the mayor’s ability to support federal immigration enforcement.
Danielle Sassoon, then the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, resigned rather than carry out that order. She described the proposed dismissal as improper. Other prosecutors in New York and Washington also stepped down after refusing to participate.
U.S. District Judge Dale Ho ultimately dismissed the indictment with prejudice, preventing the government from reviving it later. Ho said the record did not support claims of prosecutorial misconduct by the original team and criticized the department’s request to leave Adams under the threat of renewed charges.
The newly published reporting places the episode inside a broader institutional collapse. Roughly one in five government lawyers left during the first year of the administration, according to The New Yorker, while the Justice Department lost more than 4,000 employees, about 30 percent of its workforce.
Not every departure proves political interference. Lawyers leave government for many reasons, including pay, workload and career opportunities. But the Adams prosecutors described a direct test: admit the case was wrong or give up the job.
That demand also conflicts with the department’s own earlier language. A memorandum directing dismissal said it did not question the integrity or effort of the prosecutors who brought the case. Requiring an apology would turn that disclaimer into a contradiction.
The public still lacks a complete accounting of who devised the apology condition, what evidence was reviewed before the dismissal order and whether similar demands were made in other politically sensitive cases. Those questions cannot be answered by resignation letters alone.
Congressional oversight, internal watchdog review and disclosure of nonprivileged records are needed to establish who made the decisions and under what authority. The goal is not to relitigate Adams’s guilt or innocence. The indictment was dismissed, and no criminal conviction resulted.
The accountability issue is whether federal law enforcement can change course for political convenience and then pressure career prosecutors to validate that choice. Cohen and her colleagues chose resignation over a forced confession. New Yorkers deserve to know whether the department learned from that rupture or made it a model.
Sources
The New Yorker: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Associated Press: Three More Prosecutors Resign in Adams Case
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