An effort by President Donald Trump's Justice Department to dismiss what was widely viewed as politically motivated criminal charges against Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams brought by the prior Biden-Harris DOJ encountered some unexpectedly fierce internal resistance.

Several senior federal prosecutors resigned in protest rather than sign off on the move, including one in New York who asserted in his resignation letter that only a "fool" or "coward" would agree to the controversial legal move, the Washington Examiner reported.

Those aspersions cast aside, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who previously served as one of Trump's private defense attorneys, eventually found a veteran career federal prosecutor who was willing to follow the order to file a motion to dismiss the federal corruption charges against Mayor Adams.

Federal prosecutor resigns instead of following order from superior

CNN reported that Hagen Scotten, a decorated Iraq War combat veteran and former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, became the seventh federal prosecutor to resign in protest this week when he did exactly that on Friday.

In a fiery resignation letter sent to Acting DAG Bove that was subsequently published by the media, Scotten informed his superior that he'd never been formally asked to dismiss Mayor Adams' charges, as some had erroneously reported, but that he agreed with the decision of his former immediate boss, former Acting U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, to resign rather than follow the order, and that he intended to do the same.

He criticized Bove's "justifications" for the dismissal of charges so that Adams could help the Trump administration tackle illegal immigration, and the possibility that charges could be refiled later, and wrote, "No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives."

"There is a tradition in public service of resigning in a last-ditch effort to head off a serious mistake. Some will view the mistake you are committing here in the light of their generally negative views of the new Administration," Scotten continued. "I do not share those views. I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal."

"But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way," he added. "If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me."

Bove finally found somebody to dismiss the charges

The Washington Post reported that Acting DAG Bove initially ordered former U.S. Attorney Sassoon, who took temporary control of New York's Southern District last month, to file a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Mayor Adams, but she refused to do so and resigned in protest while making loud accusations of an illicit quid pro quo between the mayor and the administration.

Bove then turned to the Washington D.C.-based Public Integrity Section with the same order, to dismiss the charges against Adams, but several senior officials similarly refused and resigned in protest.

The Post noted that, per anonymous sources, Bove then held a meeting with the entire section and allegedly threatened to mass fire everyone if nobody stepped forward to fulfill his demand.

Following further internal deliberations of the remaining attorneys, in which mass resignations were contemplated, a veteran career prosecutor near retirement named Edward Sullivan finally agreed to sign off on the dismissal to spare the careers of his colleagues.

Media spinning story into a scandal

To be sure, the media and Democrats have already begun to pounce on this developing story and are overtly working to turn it into a major scandal intended to weaken President Trump and his allies at the DOJ.

That said, and while acknowledging that aspects of the saga are "distasteful," to borrow the term from Scotten's resignation letter, in the end, this whole thing boils down to the insubordination of career officials in refusing to follow direct orders they disagree with