Mayor Eric Adams Dropped Case | Judge appoints Amicus

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nycfan said:
Second resignation letter to note on this front — from a conservative former clerk of John Roberts:

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He seems to think Trump could be forgiven for a transactional view of this matter, but Bove could not.
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That is some high quality writing. Justice department resignation letters are high quality art. Someone should teach a college rhetoric class on these letters. Trump will ensure a whole semester’s worth of material.
 
nycfan said:
He went pretty far for a guy just following orders, according to Sassoon’s letter:

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I think Trump was pretty explicit about the quid pro quo he wanted. And we know Bove doesn’t have any moral qualms about doing Trump’s bidding.
 
nycfan said:
Then again, Bove has a history …

TRUMP JUSTICE DEPARTMENT APPOINTEE OVERSAW “SYSTEMIC” MISCONDUCT IN PREVIOUS JOB​

Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, may be No. 3 at DOJ. A judge blamed him for “grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility.”

theintercept.com

Trump Justice Department Appointee Oversaw “Systemic” Misconduct in Previous Job

Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, may be No. 3 at DOJ. A judge blamed him for “grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility.”
theintercept.com theintercept.com

“…
during his last stint as a supervising prosecutor, Bove oversaw a case that was so mired by prosecutorial misconduct that a judge diagnosed it an “institutional failure.”

For just over two years, Bove was one of two chiefs of the terrorism and international narcotics unit in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, as Trump highlighted in a statementlast month. It was there that Bove supervised a case involving alleged evasion of sanctions, which a federal judge slammed as “marred by repeated failures to disclose exculpatory evidence.”

The government so thoroughly botched its constitutional obligation to turn over evidence that prosecutors asked the court to vacate a jury verdict. The defendant, Ali Sadr, had been convicted on multiple counts of evading sanctions against Iran.

“The supervising Unit Chiefs appear to have offered little in the way of supervision,” wrotethen-District Court Judge Alison Nathan, who has since been elevated to the federal appellate bench, in 2021. A few months earlier, the judge noted “insufficient supervision” as a significant factor in the “disclosure-related issues that plagued the prosecution in this case.”

Nathan ultimately found there were “grave derelictions of prosecutorial responsibility” and “systemic” prosecutorial misconduct in the case, although it did not rise to the level of intentional misconduct.

… Less than a year after the blistering ruling, Bove left the Justice Department for private practice, and he joined Trump’s legal team soon after. …”

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It’s crazy how he looks like Stephen Miller’s even creepier cousin.
 
Calheel said:
That is some high quality writing. Justice department resignation letters are high quality art. Someone should teach a college rhetoric class on these letters. Trump will ensure a whole semester’s worth of material.
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It's OK. The last paragraph is kind of scattered. He uses a weak "in this way" that doesn't effectively convey his point. And the last sentence of the third paragraph shouldn't begin with "But." It would be stronger if he just wrote, "it was never going to be me." In a broad brush, though, it's effective.

I am judging here on a steep curve -- I mean, he did clerk at SCOTUS. And yes, it's kinda unfair to closely scrutinize a letter he probably just dashed out, quite possibly in a state of emotional turmoil. But I'm going to be unfair because that's what I'm in the mood to do, lol.

Sassoon's letter was quite strong. Some of the paragraphs seemed too bulky to me, and she occasionally buried the lede, I think. But that was an internal DOJ memo, and I've never written one of those, so maybe she's following the accepted style. Not going to judge. On substance, she knocked it out of the park.
 
I can't remember who said that within a few years Adams is likely to switch parties and run for a higher office in New York. At this point I think they're likely right. And hopefully it won't be yet another GOP move that pays off down the road.
 
Calheel said:
You're gonna criticize starting a sentence with "But"? That is often an effective rhetorical technique and I think it was perfect there. But differing opinions, I suppose.
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I'm not criticizing that use across the board. I think it should only be used when there is actually a logical negation, or else the "but" will create one. Here, the but technically implies that he's a fool or a coward, just not the type who would carry out this order. I mean, this is a quibble for sure -- a second order quibble at that.

More importantly, I think, he's been winding up to a statement of defiance as the coup de grace. It should be as succinct as possible. It should have no twists of logic at all. Ideally it would use an active voice (although here I can see why he didn't). Compare that to Gandhi (I think this was a paraphrase of his speech made for the movie, but still):

They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience​


Here, the "but" is well-placed. It's at the end, and it's serving to highlight an actual logical negation. He starts with the main point, which is that he is immune to torture and not at all afraid.

**** BTW, overuse of negations is something of a pet peeve of mine. I remember reading an interview with the head of Bloomberg News, discussing the style's prohibition of the use however in any story (I'm assuming they meant however in the negating sense, not something like "for however much that's worth"). I thought that was crazy. Never use however? How then would you make a point . . . and then thinking about it, I realized the editor was right. You couldn't implement a blanket ban in legal writing, but I think "no howevers" is closer to ideal than the overuse of howevers.

My students would have the same thought process. First day of my seminar, when we talked about writing, I would talk about the importance of being linear in writing. Don't weave back and forth with negations. They were skeptical. By the end of the class, they had learned to excise most of the needless negations and they realized their writing had become stronger.

You are right, of course, that there are differing styles and opinions. I don't pretend my approach is necessarily the best; I think it's probably an improvement 90% of the time. It also takes effort. As I've been posting more on message boards than writing papers, my writing has become sloppy. I use too many negations. Notice here that I used none (which required a bit of editing) and it's effective.
 
1moretimeagain said:
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“… The New York City charter allows the state governor to remove the mayor from office, though this step has never been taken before. Adams didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Hochul’s statement.

…
James Sample, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University, said the committee process—which would involve votes from a set of five city officials and from the full city council—would be a challenging route for removing the mayor.

“I don’t think there’s really any question that if one is inclined to remove Mayor Adams unwillingly, and other than via the ballot box, the Hochul option is by far and away the more efficient, clean and reliable option,” he said. “
 
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