Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s ex-assistant, Mark Pomerantz, speaks about why he resigned from the Trump probe on MSNBC. (Screenshot via YouTube)
One of former President Donald Trump’s top congressional allies issued a subpoena on Thursday to a former deputy to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, arguing the ex-prosecutor’s tell-all book about the historic investigation leaves him “no basis” to resist a deposition.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, announced the maneuver in a letter to Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from Bragg’s probe along with ex-Assistant DA Carey Dunne in early 2022.
In a letter leaked to the New York Times, Pomerantz asserted that he had a meritorious case against Trump on felony tax offenses that Bragg refused to charge.
Since then, Bragg pursued and ultimately filed charges in a separate hush-money investigation, which Pomerantz found less promising. Pomerantz provided his view of the investigation of the former president and why he resigned from it in a memoir, “People v. Trump.”
No docket by that name existed when the book was published on Feb. 7.
“Your book discloses various details about the New York County District Attorney’s Office’s investigation of President Trump, including internal deliberations about the investigation,” Jordan wrote in a six-page letter. “Indeed, you discuss how members of the Office viewed the credibility of a key witness in the case, and you note their concerns about the case’s dim prospects.”
That key witness was Michael Cohen, who engineered the complicated system to pay $130,000 to Stormy Daniels to silence her alleged tryst with Trump.
The 34-count indictment of Trump charges him with falsifying dozens of business records to disguise the payments and their reimbursements.
Bragg’s office said the subpoena follows a continuing pattern of House Republicans trying to interfere with a law enforcement investigation, charged by a grand jury.
“The House GOP continues to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation,” a spokesperson said. “Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law. These elected officials would better serve their constituents and the country, and fulfill their oath of office, by doing their jobs in Congress and not intruding on the sovereignty of the state of New York by interfering in an ongoing criminal matter in state court.”
The DA vowed to resist such efforts in the past, calling inquiries by Jordan and others an affront to state law and the U.S. Constitution, including the 10th Amendment.
Former federal prosecutor Mitchell Epner said there is precedent for congressional committees investigating local prosecutors — in very different circumstances.
“Ordinarily, it’s been when there’s been an allegation of wholesale failure to prosecute in the civil rights context or sham prosecutions,” said Epner, a partner at Rottenberg Lipman Rich PC. “Under the supremacy clause, it’s doctrinally possible for a federal subpoena to supersede state privacy laws shielding the internal workings of a prosecutor’s office.”
That doesn’t mean that Jordan will succeed, but Pomerantz’s memoir could help his committee obtain at least some information, Epner said.
“So once it’s been published, it makes it much more likely that they will be able to get the color behind the statements in the book,” he said.
Pomerantz declined to comment.
Read Jordan’s letter here.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
Follow Law&Crime:
