The Eric Adams Case, Children’s Online Safety Under Trump, and a Signal Records Lawsuit

New Filing Undermines DOJ’s Arguments in Eric Adams Case

Last month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, during which he told Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) that he didn’t have any inside information about the DOJ’s decision to dismiss its bribery case against New York City mayor Eric Adams. Now, a newly unsealed draft memo by former interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon suggests that Blanche had communicated with Trump’s DOJ regarding the case, contrary to his testimony. According to Sassoon, she urged then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to delay dropping Adams’s case until after Blanche was confirmed, prompting Bove to inform her there was “no need to wait” because Blanche was “on the same page.”

In early March, CfA filed a complaint with the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, urging it to investigate whether Bove violated the New York Bar’s Rules of Professional Conduct and DOJ policies related to the independence of prosecutions. The release of Sassoon’s draft memo raises additional concerns about the conduct of DOJ officials, and Blanche’s ability to enforce laws without favor. As Sen. Welch told the New York Times, “If this is true, it clearly indicates Blanche ‘misled’ — in plain English, lied — to the committee.”

FTC Firings Highlighted in Children’s Online Safety Hearing

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing on children’s online safety that included testimony from Rebecca Slaughter, one of two FTC commissioners illegally fired by President Trump last week. Though committee Republicans characterized her appearance as “politically motivated,” Slaughter’s work was very relevant to children’s online safety, from updating COPPA rules to publishing reports on surveillance advertising and the relationship between algorithms and teen mental health.

As Slaughter noted in her testimony, tech executives are increasingly aware that President Trump has undermined the courts and independent agencies to concentrate the power of the presidency. Under these conditions, CEOs are incentivized to make direct appeals to the administration. “With no opposition voices on the Commission, I fear for what will happen to everyday people and honest businesses and what corporate lawbreakers will be allowed to get away with,” Slaughter writes.

Lawsuit Filed Against Trump Officials in Signal Group Chat

This week, the watchdog organization American Oversight (AO) filed a lawsuit against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior members of the Trump Administration, alleging that they violated the Federal Records Act (FRA) by using a Signal group chat to coordinate bombings in Yemen. Signal chats include the option to set messages to automatically delete—a function that reporting indicates the group was using. Since Signal messages are end-to-end encrypted, once they are deleted, they are not recoverable. Therefore, AO asserts, using this auto-delete feature for federal agency communications amounts to a failure to preserve records as required by law. As AO points out, the use of a Signal chat to coordinate a military strike “presents a substantial risk that [defendants] have used and continue to use Signal in other contexts, thereby creating records that are subject to the FRA and/or the FOIA, but are not being preserved as required by those statutes.”

Yesterday, Judge James Boasberg ordered multiple federal agencies to preserve messages sent on Signal from March 11 to March 15—the period during which military operations were planned. Already, Trump has declared that media coverage of the leak is part of a “witch hunt.”

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