The threat of a mass firing was unspoken but loomed over the videoconference call.
Summoning the staff of the Justice Department’s public integrity section on Friday morning, the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove III, was matter-of-fact. Two lawyers needed to step forward to sign a request to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.
An earlier call with the section’s supervisors had gone badly. Three of them quit rather than abandon an important criminal case for brazenly political reasons. In all, seven prosecutors would resign to avoid taking a step they saw as deeply unethical.
Mr. Bove gave them an hour to make up their minds. The nearly 20 lawyers on the video call were unnerved, aware that the decisions might eviscerate their ranks and damage the department’s credibility. Some had already written their resignation letters. But a senior member of the team volunteered to sign, in part to spare his younger colleagues.
This article, based on interviews with people with knowledge of the events, offers the fullest account yet of that fraught hour. It revealed the determination of President Trump’s appointees to ram through a top-down command that ran counter to the professional standards of career lawyers and challenged the independence of the department. All spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
In demanding the case be dropped, Mr. Bove claimed that the timing of Mr. Adams’s indictment around nine months before the city’s primary gave “appearances” of political interference, and aiding a mayor who wanted to help deport undocumented immigrants outweighed convicting him of taking bribes. Mr. Bove concluded, according to the court filing in question, that “continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
Mr. Bove and Attorney General Pam Bondi have argued that dropping the charges against Mr. Adams is part of a broader effort to end the “weaponization” of the department by reining in excesses of the Biden administration. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The request elicited outrage among Justice Department employees, including a staff member who worked in Mr. Bove’s office. Nicolas Roos, a federal prosecutor from New York on a temporary assignment, immediately stepped down from that role, according to people familiar with his decision. Mr. Roos had worked closely with Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. attorney in New York, and Hagan Scotten, the lead prosecutor in the Adams case, during their time at the Southern District of New York.
On Friday, the lawyers in the public integrity section confronted a stark choice that also reflected something of a generational divide in their office. Some of the older lawyers agreed with the principle of resigning in protest, but they also felt a pull to be practical and try to preserve the institution as much as possible.
The resignations of seven leading prosecutors, including Ms. Sassoon and Mr. Scotten, already sent a blaring message, they said. The public integrity section was working on about 200 cases, and the departure of all the lawyers in the section risked bringing them to an end.
Already, they noted, defense lawyers were peppering Mr. Bove — himself a former member of Mr. Trump’s criminal defense team — with appeals to drop cases based on arguments similar to his reasoning in the Adams case.
Then came a volunteer.
After 30 minutes of discussion, Ed Sullivan, a longtime prosecutor in the section, offered to sign Mr. Bove’s motion. Doing so would protect the other lawyers, he believed, and in some ways, he did not have as much to lose.
Fifteen years earlier, Mr. Sullivan was investigated surrounding misconduct in the prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. While other lawyers were found to have acted improperly, Mr. Sullivan was ultimately exonerated.
Respected by his peers in the department, Mr. Sullivan had a public reputation that had to some degree already been tarnished by that investigation and the mere fact that he was part of a case that was a humbling setback for the department. If he signed, he reasoned, the consequences would not be much worse than what he had already endured.
A debate ensued, with some uncertain that it was the right course.
For the prosecutors, resigning could mean more than just losing a job; it could also endanger their livelihood. As the Trump administration drastically cuts the federal work force, private law firms are awash in résumés from government lawyers, and many firms see little point in hiring expertise in white-collar defense work, given that the administration has signaled that it will cut back on such cases.
Nevertheless, the prosecutors believed that resisting Mr. Bove’s demand while protecting their other cases surpassed any other factor, no matter the price.
Eventually, with just a couple of minutes left before Mr. Bove’s deadline for a decision, Mr. Sullivan noted that the prosecutors had run out of time to deliberate, and he would put his name on the filing.
Many in the group considered Mr. Sullivan’s decision to step forward an honorable act.
Along with Mr. Sullivan, another lawyer put her name on the document: Antoinette Bacon, known as Toni. Current and former Justice Department officials view her role more critically.
A longtime prosecutor in Ohio, Ms. Bacon had joined the administration to run the criminal division — an appointment that had been initially greeted with relief by career officials. But as the standoff between Mr. Bove and the career prosecutors persisted last week, many who report to Ms. Bacon came to see her as unquestioningly following Mr. Bove’s instructions, despite her years of experience as a corruption prosecutor.
Ms. Bacon’s former supervisor in Ohio, Ann Rowland, expressed disbelief at her actions.
“Toni is one of the foremost public corruption attorneys in the country, so she knows the Adams indictment is more than worthy of prosecution,” Ms. Rowland said. “One then can only conclude her decision to sign off on the motion to dismiss was purely political.”
Neither Ms. Bacon nor a Justice Department spokeswoman responded to requests for comment.
Across the department, dismay has set in over the standoff in the Adams case, which echoes a grim moment during the Watergate scandal known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Rather than carry out an order from President Richard M. Nixon to fire the prosecutor investigating him, several senior political appointees resigned.
The current conflict, some in the department believe, is even worse. When senior leaders resigned in 1973, they were in essence standing up to the White House, even as political appointees.
But now the department’s leaders are taking aim at their own lower ranks, in what many current and former Justice Department officials describe as a profound betrayal of the shared cause of justice.
Mr. Bove and Ms. Bacon could have signed the Adams motion at any time, without drawing other department lawyers into it, the officials said. Proceeding this way appeared to accomplish little more than forcing career prosecutors to capitulate.