‘Abuse of power’: Trump prosecutor fires back as Republicans launch probe
Washington: House Republicans have subpoenaed one of the former Manhattan prosecutors who had been leading a criminal investigation into Donald Trump, drawing fire from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg who this week indicted the former president.
Representative Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, ordered Mark Pomerantz to testify before the committee by April 30.
The subpoena is the latest escalation by Republicans as they side with Trump and probe Bragg, days after the former president was charged with 34-counts in connection with a hush-money scheme involving a porn actress.
Pomerantz refused to voluntarily co-operate with the committee’s request last month at the instruction of Bragg’s office, citing the ongoing investigation.
Bragg’s office has accused Jordan’s committee of overstepping its legal authority and infringing on New York state sovereignty.
Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.Credit: Bloomberg
In a letter to Pomerantz, Jordan wrote: “Based on your unique role as a special assistant district attorney leading the investigation into President Trump’s finances, you are uniquely situated to provide information that is relevant and necessary to inform the committee’s oversight and potential legislative reforms.”
Pomerantz did not respond to requests for comment.
Bragg called the subpoena another example of a Republican “attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case”.
“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,” Bragg wrote in a tweet.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg .Credit: AP
Republicans had rallied around Trump in the lead-up to his indictment Tuesday, labelling Bragg’s investigation a “political persecution”.
Jordan and other senior Republican representatives see Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, who ran the investigation on a day-to-day basis, as catalysts for Bragg’s decision to move ahead with the hush-money case.
Both men started on the probe under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance jnr, and Bragg asked them to stay when he took office in January. Both Vance and Bragg are Democrats.
The Trump indictment centres on allegations that he falsified internal business records at his private company while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy.
It includes 34 counts of falsifying records related to cheques Trump sent to his personal lawyer and problem-solver to reimburse him for his role in paying off a porn actor who said she had an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump years earlier.
Pomerantz released a book earlier this year titled People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account. In the book, he said that Vance authorised him in December 2021 to seek Trump’s indictment.
He has portrayed the hush-money payments — made or arranged by Cohen — as perhaps the most challenging and legally fraught of the potential cases against the former president.
Jordan wrote on Thursday that Pomerantz should be allowed to co-operate since he has “already discussed many of the topics relevant to our oversight” in the book he published and promoted.
He said that Pomerantz’s own book detailed how the case looking into “Trump appears to have been politically motivated”.
“Specifically, you describe your eagerness to investigate President Trump, writing that you were ‘delighted’ to join an unpaid group of lawyers advising on the Trump investigations, and joking that salary negotiations had gone ‘great’ because you would have paid to join the investigation,” the Jordan letter continued.
AP
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