The Justice Department’s recent instruction to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams has prompted a wave of resignations from key federal prosecutors on Thursday, including one attorney who said the order “amounted to a quid pro quo.”

That sentiment was expressed in a lengthy resignation letter from Manhattan U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday after a tense few days at the Department of Justice.

Sassoon, a Yale Law School alum who once clerked for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, was only in the role for a few weeks. She was quickly ushered into the U.S. attorney’s office in New York after Trump was inaugurated. She held the position on a temporary basis while Trump’s permanent nominee for the role, Jay Clayton, awaits confirmation by the Senate.

In addition to Sassoon, two prosecutors who oversee public integrity divisions at the DOJ in Washington, D.C., resigned on Thursday: Kevin Driscoll and John Keller. Adams’ case was transferred to that division after acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove demanded Adams’ charges be dropped.

Adams was indicted last year for bribery, fraud and soliciting foreign campaign donations. He pleaded not guilty and was headed to trial this spring.

Bove, The Associated Press reported Tuesday, wanted Adams’ charges dropped because he believed if the mayor had to face them, it would distract him from devoting his “full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration,” according to a memo obtained by the outlet.

In her letter to Bondi, Sassoon said when she attended a meeting on Jan. 31 with Bove and Adams’ lawyers, the mayor’s “attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed.”

Bove, who once served as Trump’s personal lawyer in his criminal hush money case in New York, then “admonished” a member of Sassoon’s team who was taking notes and ordered that they be collected when the meeting was over.

In a letter accepting her resignation on Thursday, Bove slammed Sassoon, accusing her of basing her decision to resign on “your choice to continue pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case.”

“You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice by suggesting that you retain discretion to interpret the Constitution in a manner inconsistent with the policies of a democratically elected President and a Senate-confirmed Attorney General,” Bove wrote.

Bove added that prosecutors who worked on the Adams case were now on administrative leave “until further notice,” and although they will still receive their full salaries, they are banned from using government phones or devices. The acting deputy attorney general also wrote that their disobedience, as well as Sassoon’s, would prompt them to be investigated by the office of the attorney general and the Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department. A report would be completed, and if necessary, they could be terminated, according to the letter.

Sassoon told Bondi that the federal government simply does not have a legitimate reason to dismiss Adams’ charges, and the legal analogies that Bove tried to draw struck her as altogether false.

“Mr. Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws, analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the United States freed notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia. Such an exchange with Adams violates commonsense beliefs in the equal administration of justice, the Justice Manual, and the Rules of Professional Conduct,” Sassoon wrote in her resignation letter.

The rule of law depends on impartiality and insulation from political influence or favor, but what Adams and Bove have presented — “leniency for federal crimes solely because he occupies an important public position,” she wrote — is nothing of that sort.

“If a criminal prosecution cannot be used to punish political activity, it likewise cannot be used to induce or coerce such activity. Threatening criminal prosecution even to gain an advantage in civil litigation is considered misconduct for an attorney… In your words, ‘the Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct,’” Sassoon wrote.

“Dismissal of the indictment for no other reason than to influence Adams’s mayoral decision-making would be all three,” she added.

With Sassoon out, it is unclear who will step in. Neither the Justice Department nor a spokesperson for the Manhattan district attorney’s office returned a request for comment regarding Sassoon’s leave.