General Discussion

The federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York issued a statement after Hochul’s saying they would be investigating the incident. They are the ones that will ultimately decide on filing charges and seeking an indictment from a federal grand jury.

That’s why Hochul’s statement didn’t make much sense, federal arrests typically go before a grand jury before charges can be formally filed, there weren’t any charges to be dropped yet. It’s also not up to the federal agents who arrested him to file or drop charges, they can release him after the arrest and gathering his information, but formally filing charges would go through the SDNY office.