Left: John Sarcone speaks on June 23, 2025, about Saul Morales-Garcia threat incident (CBS6/YouTube). Right: Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks to the media, Friday, June 27, 2025, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
An interim U.S. attorney that a court declined to appoint upon the expiration of his acting term — only to see him reappointed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi as a “Special Attorney” with the same powers — acted “erratically and potentially illegally” and in violation of professional rules, claimed a bar complaint from a nonprofit, self-described watchdog group.
The Campaign for Accountability”s (CfA) complaint against John Sarcone III, submitted to the Attorney Grievance Committee of New York’s Third Judicial Department and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, alleged that Sarcone, “in just the four months since he was initially sworn in […] may have violated numerous rules governing attorney conduct.”
The complaint listed six rules, each “prohibiting” certain conduct: “improper extrajudicial statements”; “instituting charges not supported by probable cause”; “illegal conduct that adversely reflects on honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness”; “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation”; acting in a manner “prejudicial to the administration of justice”; and acting in a manner that “adversely reflects on the lawyer’s fitness as a lawyer.”
Sarcone, a Donald Trump loyalist who lacked prosecutorial experience and has at least once called the Democratic Party “evil,” was appointed by Bondi in late February and then sworn in as interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York.
Like acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba, Sarcone needed to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve permanently in the U.S. attorney position. In both of their cases, however, a federal court ultimately declined to appoint them as their 120-day acting terms ended. And in both of their cases, Bondi kept them in their roles by simultaneously naming them a “Special Attorney to the Attorney General” and first assistant U.S. attorneys.
That maneuvering — and the legality thereof — is currently the subject of litigation in New Jersey, but it is at least part of the backdrop against which the Sarcone complaint rests.
The complaint mainly focused on a June 17 incident outside a hotel where Saul Morales-Garcia — a previously deported El Salvadoran illegally in the U.S. — allegedly threatened Sarcone while the suspect had a knife in hand, initially leading to a second-degree attempted murder charge based on Sarcone’s account of what took place.
Video footage of the incident led Albany County District Attorney Lee Kindlon to drop the attempted murder charge, and Morales-Garcia instead admitted to second-degree menacing and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
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The complaint alleged that Sarcone, when he formally reported the threat to the Albany County Sheriff’s Office, signed documents noting that false statements “made herein are punishable as a class A Misdemeanor pursuant to section 210.45 of the New York State Penal Law” — yet his and his office’s statements about the incident didn’t match what the video showed.
From the complaint:
The day after the incident, Sheriff Apple appeared on television explaining that Mr. Sarcone had called him in the midst of the attack and said Mr. Morales-Garcia had “lunged at him again with a knife, and he’s making dragging the knife over his throat [sic], that he’s going to kill him.”
Two days after the incident, on June 19, 2025, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York (“NDNY USAO”) issued a news release stating that Mr. Sarcone had been “the victim of a life-threatening incident,” and that the perpetrator had been charged with attempted second-degree murder. The release also states Mr. Morales-Garcia “lunged at Sarcone,” and later made a “slitting-the-throat gesture at Sarcone.”
The video of the incident, however, depicts none of this.
Next, Sarcone criticized as “appalling” the Albany Police Department non-arrival at the crime scene, though he did not call 911 and even though “Albany Patrol units were notified via dispatch approximately 7 minutes after the incident and did respond,” the complaint recounted. That led to a rebuke from the Albany Police Benevolent Association.
“It is truly appalling that a sitting U.S. Attorney would fail to use a system [911] that provides the absolute fastest police response, especially under circumstances where he claims someone could have been seriously injured or killed,” the PBA statement quoted in the complaint said. “His failure to do so unnecessarily risked harm to innocent civilians.”
The CfA complaint further alleged that in his statement to investigators Sarcone listed an Albany apartment residence as his proof of a local address, that the address was “discovered to be boarded-up,” and that when the Times Union newspaper caught wind of that and reported on it, he retaliated.
“I know many, many people at Fox and such action would induce me to pen an op-ed in the New York Post noting how this ‘hit piece’ seemingly superseded actual news, considering all that is currently transpiring in New York, in America and worldwide, a viewpoint that would rival even the biased trash seen on The View,” he allegedly said, before removing, for two weeks, the Times Union from his office’s media distribution list.
The complaint suggested that Sarcone was upset about the “boarded-up” building report because it undercut his attempt to “claim a residential address where he does not live to avoid his likely violation of the federal residency requirement” — a statute which in most cases requires that “[e]ach United States attorney shall reside in the district for which he is appointed[.]”
“Mr. Sarcone’s apparent abuse of his public office to demand higher charges against Mr. Morales-Garcia than were warranted by the evidence, to allow his office to issue a press release aimed at increasing public opprobrium against Mr. Morales-Garcia, and to claim a residential address where he does not live to avoid his likely violation of the federal residency requirement, and then to retaliate against a newspaper that revealed he could not live there, all suggest Mr. Sarcone has an inability to fulfill the professional role of lawyers,” the complaint concluded.
In a statement, CfA Executive Director Michelle Kuppersmith said Sarcone “has behaved erratically and potentially illegally” during his time in office and a “thorough investigation into these allegations” is warranted, along with potential “disciplinary measures” if substantiated.
Sarcone did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment.
