The New York Times reports:

Danielle R. Sassoon shot like a laser through the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, with stints fighting violent crime and securities fraud as well as handling appeals before she was elevated, at age 38, to be its interim head.

There, just weeks into her tenure running the country’s most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office, she encountered an obstacle that threatened to stall her rapid rise: the desire of President Trump’s administration to drop corruption charges against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.

On Thursday, Ms. Sassoon resigned rather than carry out the order, setting off several other resignations within the Department of Justice and standing up for the independence that has defined her Manhattan office for decades.

“I cannot fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office in carrying out the department’s priorities, or credibly represent the government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case,” she wrote in a letter to the attorney general the day before her departure.

Given her experience — and bulletproof conservative credentials as a member of the Federalist Society — Ms. Sassoon seemed ready to lead an office that saw tumultuous times during Mr. Trump’s first term, when he fired two of its U.S. attorneys. In recent days, prosecutors had been watching Ms. Sassoon anxiously to see how she might respond to the Justice Department’s demand that she drop the Adams case, which she had supported in a court filing.

Through a spokesman, Ms. Sassoon declined to comment for this article.

Before the Adams case vaulted her into the spotlight, Ms. Sassoon’s life had been characterized by achievement that was noteworthy even in environments where achievement is the norm. Born and raised in New York City, she attended Ramaz, a modern Orthodox Jewish school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where she was first in her class and received awards for academic excellence. In high school, she spent hours each day studying the Talmud, an effort that she has said prepared her to study law.

Rebecca Kaden, a close friend who met Ms. Sassoon right before they began their freshman year at Harvard University, said she always knew Ms. Sassoon would be a lawyer. The future U.S. attorney was cerebral, a dynamic thinker eager to discuss and debate ideas.

She wrote columns about Middle East politics for the student newspaper, one of them in her role as press secretary of Harvard Students for Israel, as well as a soft-focus profile of a classmate for “Scene,” a friend’s magazine project.

One of her classes, “Justice,” was taught by the professor Michael J. Sandel, in a packed auditorium of hundreds of students, some of whose comments received enthusiastic applause. In that class, Ms. Sassoon stood and delivered an outspoken argument against race-based affirmative action.

“You could argue that affirmative action perpetuates divisions between the races, rather than achieving the ultimate goal of race being an irrelevant factor in our society,” she said.

There was no applause when she finished.

But if she was unafraid to speak frankly with her peers, Ms. Sassoon could be soft-spoken with the mentors on campus. A family friend introduced her to the law professor Alan Dershowitz, who soon brought her on as a research assistant. Mr. Dershowitz said that Ms. Sassoon understood “all sides of all arguments” but recalled her as “diffident, reserved” and “shy.”

“She’ll very politely and very gently challenge you,” Mr. Dershowitz said, adding, “She was always interested in public service.”

After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude in 2008, Ms. Sassoon attended Yale Law School, known for its focus on public interest law. She graduated in 2011 and served in consecutive clerkships for conservative judges.

The first, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the federal appeals court for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., recalled Ms. Sassoon as whip-smart and versatile — equally at home in the higher precincts of appellate law and before a jury.

He said he would not comment “in any way, shape or form” on decisions that Ms. Sassoon faced in the Adams case or in others. He added: “All I would say is that Danielle is someone who’s very principled and rigorously honest and plays it straight.”

She later clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Antonin Scalia, a giant of the conservative legal movement. In an essay after his death in 2016, she wrote, “Justice Scalia was my kind of feminist.

“He spared me no argumentative punches and demanded rigor from my work,” she added. “He taught me how to fire a pistol and a rifle, and made me feel like I had grit. He thickened my skin, which was the best preparation for a career in a male-dominated field.” [Continue reading…]