New York City Mayor Eric Adams asks court to toss case against him due to prosecutorial misconduct
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(NEW YORK) — The corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams should be dropped because of “an extraordinary flurry” of leaks by prosecutors, his attorney said in a new court filing Wednesday.
The attorney, Alex Spiro, accused “someone within the government” of leaking a letter written by then-acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who resigned in protest of an order to dismiss the bribery and campaign finance charges.
The letter, dated Feb. 12, said the Justice Department agreed to dismiss criminal charges as part of a quid pro quo to secure the mayor’s help with President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
“The disclosure of this letter to the press was part of an extraordinary flurry of leaked internal Justice Department correspondence that included memoranda from the Acting Deputy Attorney General to the Southern District and an unhinged resignation letter by one of the former line prosecutors on this case,” Spiro said.
The line prosecutor Spiro references is Hagan Scotten, whose resignation letter said only a “fool” or “coward” would carry out the order to drop the mayor’s case.
“In addition to violating Mayor Adams’s fundamental constitutional rights and ability to receive a fair trial, the government’s leaks violated numerous statutory and court rules, including the Justice Department’s own longstanding policies aimed at curbing prosecutorial misconduct,” Spiro said. “Simply put, the government’s conduct has destroyed whatever presumption of innocence Mayor Adams had left.”
The judge, Dale Ho, declined to immediately grant the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the case and appointed Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general, to examine the government’s motives.
In the new motion filed first thing Wednesday morning, Adams asked the court to toss the case for a new reason — prosecutorial misconduct.
“The Court should act swiftly and dismiss this case with prejudice to prevent further irrevocable harm to Mayor Adams,” the motion said.
(BOSTON) — A Tufts University PhD student on a visa was arrested by immigration authorities outside of Boston on Tuesday night, according to the school and the student’s lawyer.
The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, is a Turkish national, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai.
“Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national who was maintaining valid F-1 status as a PhD student at Tufts University,” Khanbabai said in a statement. “Rumeysa was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast on the evening of March 25th when she was detained near her home in Somerville, MA by DHS agents. We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her.”
“No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of. I filed a habeas petition requesting that she not be moved out of the District of MA which was granted by Judge [Indira] Talwani last night,” according to her lawyer.
ABC News has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ozturk is listed in the ICE database as “in custody.”
In an email to students on Tuesday, the school said it was informed that her visa status was “terminated,” and is seeking to find out more information.
“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University,” the school wrote.
“From what we have been told subsequently, the student’s visa status has been terminated, and we seek to confirm whether that information is true. The university has no additional information at this time about the cause or circumstances of the student’s apprehension and is attempting to learn more about the incident,” it continued, in part.
“Following university protocol, the Office of University Counsel will assist in connecting the student to external legal resources should the individual request our assistance,” it added.
(NEWARK, NJ) — A Pennsylvania man attempting to go through airport security was discovered to have been hiding a living turtle in his pants as he tried to sneak it onto the plane, authorities said.
The incident took place last Friday at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey when a man from Pennsylvania was going through a body scan in the security area when an alarm was triggered “in the area of the man’s groin,” according to a statement from the Transportation Security Administration on Tuesday.
“A TSA officer administered a pat-down of the area of the man’s body where the alarm was triggered and in doing so, determined that there was something concealed in the area of the man’s groin,” TSA officials said regarding the incident. “When asked if there was something hidden in his pants, the man, a resident of East Stroudsburg, Pa., reached down the front of his pants and pulled out a live turtle that was wrapped in a small blue towel.”
The turtle was estimated to be approximately five inches in length and identified to be a red-ear slider turtle – one of the most popular breeds of pet turtle in the United States – by the man once he was caught by airport security.
“Port Authority Police questioned the man, took possession of the turtle and indicated that they would contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local animal control officials,” the TSA said.
The unnamed man missed his flight and was escorted out of the checkpoint by police.
Thomas Carter, TSA’s Federal Security Director for New Jersey, said that this is the first time he has ever seen someone trying to smuggle a live animal down the front on their pants as they attempted to go through security.
“I commend our officer who conducted the pat-down in a very professional manner in an effort to resolve the alarm,” said Carter. “We have seen travelers try to conceal knives and other weapons on their person, in their shoes and in their luggage, however I believe this is the first time we have come across someone who was concealing a live animal down the front of his pants. As best as we could tell, the turtle was not harmed by the man’s actions.”
Allison Robbert for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge has scheduled a hearing at 5 p.m. ET Monday to address the question of whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
Shortly before the hearing’s scheduled start time, the judge, James Boasberg, denied a request from Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to call off the hearing.
Justice Department attorneys subsequently asked the circuit court to step in and stop the hearing and to assign the case to a different judge.
President Donald Trump’s administration made a calculated decision Saturday to ignore the judge’s directive to turn around two flights containing hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Saturday’s verbal instructions from Boasberg accompanied a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting noncitizens currently in custody, which the judge issued less than two hours after Trump attempted to invoke the 18th century law to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg, in his temporary restraining order, explicitly told the government to turn around any aircraft that had already departed the country if they were still in the air. However, sources said top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
DOJ attorneys argued in their Monday court filing that court should vacate the hearing because they do not believe they violated the court’s orders, and they are not prepared to provide any further operational security or national security details to the plaintiffs or to the public.
Bondi, Blanche and additional top DOJ leadership wrote that “an oral directive is not enforceable as an injunction” — claiming the government not violate any order because the oral directive in court, issued at 6:46 p.m. ET Saturday, was not in the written order that was filed to the docket at 7:25 p.m. ET.
In a court filing late Sunday night, lawyers with the ACLU and Democracy Forward Foundation argued that the Trump administration may have committed a “blatant violation” of the court’s directive by acting as if the order only applied to flights in U.S. airspace and individuals on American soil.
“This Court orally and unambiguously directed the government to turn around any planes carrying individuals being removed pursuant to the AEA Proclamation,” the filing said.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice insisted in a court filing Sunday that they removed “gang members” pursuant to Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation before the court issued its order.
However, lawyers representing some of the migrants argued that assertion not only conflicts with the timeline of events but also misconstrues when the United States loses jurisdiction of the noncitizens.
“Whether or not the planes had cleared U.S. territory, the U.S. retained custody at least until the planes landed and the individuals were turned over to foreign governments,” the plaintiffs’ filing said. “And the Court could not have been clearer that it was concerned with losing jurisdiction and authority to order the individuals returned if they were handed over to foreign governments, not with whether the planes had cleared U.S. territory or had even landed in another country.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said that based on publicly available information, it appears that two flights carrying migrants under the Alien Enemies Act landed after the court’s verbal and written orders. They added that “public comments made by Defendants and the President of El Salvador” boasting about the court being “too late” to stop the deportations reinforces concerns that the Trump administration may have violated the order.
“Defendants could have turned the plane around without handing over individuals subject to the Proclamation and this Court’s [Temporary Restraining Order],” the lawyers argued.
Finding the deportations would cause irreparable harm, Boasberg’s temporary restraining order on Saturday barred the Trump administration from deporting “all non-citizens who are subject to the AEA proclamation” for at least 14 days.
“You shall inform your clients of this immediately any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg said during Saturday’s hearing. “However that’s accomplished, turning around the plane, or not embarking anyone on the plane. … This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have asked Judge Boasberg to order the Trump administration to submit sworn declarations to determine whether the government knowingly violated his court order.
