Date: 2025-04-03 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00028032
NYT OPNION
From Danielle Sassoon
Extracted in mid February 2025
From Danielle Sassoon
Extracted in mid February 2025
Original article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/opinion/danielle-sassoon-eric-adams-justice-dept.html#
Peter Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
A Profile in Courage From Danielle Sassoon
Feb. 14, 2025
More from our inbox:
Kennedy and the Health of the Nation
Trump ‘Winning’
Credit...Kent Nishimura for The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “Justice Officials Resign in Protest Over Adams Case” (front page, Feb. 14):
We are the leaders of the New York County Lawyers Association. For 117 years, our association has stood for upholding the rule of law and applying it fairly to all people, no matter their race, creed or position.
We are appalled by the news of the acting U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon’s resignation in the face of her Justice Department superiors’ order to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams for what, according to the internal correspondence, appear to be political, nonlegal reasons.
This is the way the rule of law is undermined. We are watching it in real time. We are heartened by the courage shown by Ms. Sassoon and her colleagues who also resigned over this order, but it will take far more than a handful of lawyers to stand up to this raw exercise of power.
Adrienne B. Koch
Richard P. Swanson
Ronald C. Minkoff
New York
The writers are, respectively, the president, president-elect and vice president of the New York County Lawyers Association.
To the Editor:
I am a retired assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York. I worked with and supervised Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten. They are two of the most principled and ethical prosecutors I worked with in my 20 years at the Southern District. Their ethics cannot seriously be questioned, especially by this administration.
To Danielle, I say thank you. Thank you for your bravery. Thank you for your voice. Thank you for standing up for the rule of law. Thank you, Hagan, for pursuing justice without fear or favor. I am so grateful for the two of you and honored to have worked with you.
I have read both Danielle’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s letter to Danielle. I urge anyone who reads my letter to do so as well.
What Mr. Bove was ordering was clearly a quid pro quo — dropping a meritorious case against Mayor Eric Adams in return for Mr. Adams’s cooperation with the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.
This is not justice; it is the handwork of a dictatorship in the making.
Laurie Korenbaum
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, in his letter accepting the resignation of the acting U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon, makes the centuries-old error of protesting too much.
The proper response to a Justice Department attorney who offers to resign because she can’t in good conscience act as directed would simply be to accept the resignation and perhaps wish her luck with future endeavors outside the department.
Mr. Bove’s angry rant and parade of justifications plainly betray his knowledge of the corruptness of his directive and the coercion he will have to apply to get other career attorneys to do his dirty work.
Steven Leovy
Boulder, Colo.
Kennedy and the Health of the Nation Image
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at his Senate confirmation hearing last month. Mr. Kennedy has said he wants to tackle the chronic disease epidemic and rid grocery stores of ultraprocessed foods, but he has offered few specifics.Credit...Cheriss May for The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “Kennedy Wins Slim Approval in Health Post” (front page, Feb. 14):
Now that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed as President Trump’s secretary of health and human services, what do he, the surgeon general and the C.D.C. director intend to do to control the growing measles outbreak in Texas and the tens of millions of Americans affected by influenza, with many more sure to be infected?
How many Americans will be sickened or die unnecessarily by vaccine-preventable illnesses during Mr. Trump’s second term? As many as or more than the hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths that could have been prevented during his first?
A concerned public wants to know.
Daniel Fink
Beverly Hills, Calif.
The writer is a retired internist.
To the Editor:
With his crank views regarding vaccines and AIDS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fits neatly into the reality-hostile Trump administration. This is a tragedy. Mr. Kennedy built a respectable reputation as a cons
umer advocate and an environmental activist that his embrace of medical quackery is now destroying.
Mr. Kennedy seems driven by reflexive suspicion of anything and everything associated with corporate America. It’s not as though corporations haven’t earned a reputation for untrustworthiness, but Mr. Kennedy is throwing the baby out with the bath water and throwing away his credibility as well.
Eric B. Lipps
Staten Island
To the Editor:
By confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next secretary of health and human services, four Republican members of the Senate who are doctors — John Barrasso of Wyoming, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Rand Paul of Kentucky — have violated a portion of the Hippocratic oath they swore as physicians: “I will abstain from all intentional wrongdoing and harm.”
Mr. Kennedy’s career as an anti-vaxxer and his advocacy for consuming raw milk (just two of his dangerous positions) will not, as he claims, “make America healthy again.”
To those with chronic illness or disabilities, this feels like a personal assault. Sadly, his confirmation now sets the stage for a Darwinian America: survival of the fittest.
Suzy Szasz
Richmond, Va.
The writer is the author of “Living With It,” about her experience with lupus and life with chronic illness.
To the Editor:
As a mathematician watching the Senate confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead our Department of Health and Human Services, I found myself imagining this scenario if President Trump nominated someone to lead a Department of Mathematics instead:
Mr. Trump’s selection would be a person who rose to fame by asserting that 2 + 2 = 7. Senate Republicans, putting aside any arithmetic qualms, would confirm the nominee in order to “shake things up.” When the new secretary of mathematics assumed office, things would be shaken mercilessly — there would be no more D.E.I. (Divisors, Equations, Isosceles triangles); odd numbers would be forbidden because they were too “woke.”
As a consequence, U.S. mathematics would crumble, with bridges collapsing, GPS systems failing and credit cards easily hacked. In spite of such chaos, Republican senators would be pleased, for they once again bowed before Donald Trump and thereby avoided his wrath. And that, really, is their primary mission in Washington.
For this mathematician, it just doesn’t add up.
William Dunham
Bryn Mawr, Pa.
The writer is a research associate in mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.
Trump ‘Winning’ Image
President Trump in the Oval Office.
In the eyes of right-wing media, President Trump’s first weeks back in the White House have been a success.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “In Eyes of the Right-Wing Media, Trump Just Keeps On Winning” (Business, Feb. 6):
I nearly lost my capacity for rage and disappointment when I read about the right-wing media’s robotic claim of President Trump’s incessant “winning.”
Mr. Trump’s “winning” is in inverse proportion to the damage he has inflicted upon the nation with his impulsive, performative disruptions and manifest incompetence. The first few weeks of Trump 2.0 with its regressive taxes (tariffs) and dismantling of federal agencies is a harbinger of the dystopia we face in the next four years.
John R. Leopold
Stoney Beach, Md.