An appointee of President Donald Trump ordered prosecutors in New York City to sign off on dismissing Mayor Eric Adams’s bribery case, but they did not obey, resignations ensued, and legal experts across the political spectrum now say the debacle tainted the Justice Department’s credibility.

Two top-tier prosecutors in the Southern District of New York and five officials in the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section opted to abruptly leave their jobs in the span of about 24 hours instead of complying with acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove’s order to drop Adams’s charges.