A veteran prosecutor who helped convict crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried has been named acting Manhattan US Attorney — inheriting Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case and other high-profile probes.
Danielle Sassoon, who earlier in her career was a law clerk for conservative US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, was appointed to the powerful perch Monday afternoon, soon after President Trump was sworn into office.
Sassoon, who has been with the office since 2016, assumed the title Monday afternoon “pursuant to an order signed by Acting Attorney General James R. McHenry III,” US Attorney’s Office spokesman Nicholas Biase said in a statement.
It’s unclear how long Sassoon’s tenure will last, given Trump’s stated plan to nominate Jay Clayton to the key Department of Justice post.
Clayton — a former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission who has never prosecuted a case — must be confirmed by the US Senate before taking control of the office, which is prepping for trials in its bombshell cases against Adams and Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The Southern District of New York also has a long history of bringing headline-grabbing financial fraud, government corruption and sex trafficking cases.
Former Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams, who resigned last month, started as the top boss at SDNY in October 2021 — nearly 10 months after Joe Biden, who nominated him to the post, became president.
Sassoon is best known for leading the office’s prosecution of Bankman-Fried, in which a jury convicted the scraggly-haired former crypto wonder boy of stealing around $10 billion from users of his cryptocurrency exchange.
The prosecutor confronted Bankman-Fried during a blistering cross-examination — and ripped his claim his hedge fund Alameda Research merely “borrowed” billions from his collapsed exchange FTX because of “oversights” in “risk management,” rather than crimes.
“You can’t walk into a jewelry store, steal a diamond necklace and then walk out and say there was no security guard,” Sassoon told jurors in her closing statement.
“He knew what he was doing was wrong.”
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