Manhattan prosecutors go silent

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This is wild. They made federal prosecutors in the US quit rather than drop the case. When the Justice Department ordered its own attorneys to kill their corruption investigation into New York City’s mayor, the prosecutors did something extraordinary. They resigned en masse. Entire teams walking out rather than admit “wrongdoing” for doing their jobs.

The Southern District of New York, once the most feared prosecutor’s office in America, has been completely neutered. These prosecutors weren’t allowed to see if their case would succeed or fail. They were simply told to stop. When they refused, they were pushed out. A federal judge eventually dismissed the case “with prejudice”, citing concerns about “perpetual prosecutorial leverage” over the mayor.

The judge basically said prosecutors had become tools of political control, not justice. This wasn’t the beginning of a trend. It was the culmination of something, as the chart below shows.

CHART 1 • Manhattan prosecutors go silent

The Southern District of New York, once the terror of Wall Street, has basically stopped prosecuting financial crime. This chart shows SDNY press releases about criminal prosecutions plummeting to near zero in Q3 2025.

The institution that brought down mob bosses and Wall Street titans has gone increasingly silent. White collar prosecutions have fallen over 10% this year alone, according to federal data. The FBI has been told to spend a third of their time on immigration instead.

The new DOJ memo from May explicitly warns prosecutors against “overreach that punishes risk-taking”. The timing is suspicious. Just as AI creates unprecedented opportunities for fraud, just as crypto needs serious oversight, just as private equity swallows the entire economy, the federal prosecutors go home.

Source: Financial Times

This is why data visualisation matters. Data doesn’t lie or stay silent. It shows you what’s really happening and cuts through the noise. Without this chart, this story would have slipped past most of us.

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