Jim Jordan subpoenad attorney who pushed DA Bragg on Trump

WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday subpoenaed attorney Mark Pomerantz, who wrote a book calling for former President Donald Trump’s prosecution after working under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

The subpoena compels Pomerantz to testify after Trump, the 76-year-old front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, was arraigned Tuesday on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.

It’s unclear if Pomerantz, who resigned from the DA’s Office last year after Bragg’s initial decision not to prosecute Trump for possible financial crimes, will challenge the subpoena, which cites his public remarks as evidence of bias.

“Pomerantz publicly criticized Bragg for failing to aggressively prosecute President Trump and even wrote a memoir describing his eagerness to investigate President Trump and disclosing internal deliberations about the investigation,” the Judiciary Committee said.

“Pomerantz’s public statements about the investigation strongly suggest that Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump is politically motivated.”

The subpoena tells Pomerantz: “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.”

“Although the New York County District Attorney’s Office has directed you not to cooperate with our
oversight, you have already discussed many of the topics relevant to our oversight in a book you
wrote and published in February 2023, as well as in several public interviews to promote your
book,” the subpoena goes on.

“As a result, you have no basis to decline to testify about matters before the Committee that you have already discussed in your book and/or on a prime-time television program with an audience in the millions, including on the basis of any purported duty of confidentiality or privilege interest.”

Jordan’s subpoena continues, “Your book, described as a ‘300-page exercise in score-settling and scorn,’ also reveals the extent to which the New York County District Attorney’s Office’s investigation of President
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.”

Jordan (R-Ohio) noted that Pomerantz compared Trump to notorious mob boss John Gotti and said the DA “was ‘warranted in throwing the book’ at President Trump because, in your view, he ‘had become a
master of breaking the law in ways that were difficult to reach.’

“You explain that this ‘collective weight’ of President Trump’s conduct over the years ‘left no doubt in [your] mind that [President] Trump deserved to be prosecuted.’ In other words, as a special assistant district
attorney, you seem, for reasons unrelated to the facts of this particular investigation, to have been
searching for any basis on which to bring criminal charges.”

Jordan concluded that “[t]hese perceptions appear to have colored your work as a special assistant district attorney, to the point that you even resigned because the investigation into President Trump was
not proceeding fast enough for your liking.”

Pomerantz could not immediately be reached for comment.

The subpoena may not be the last time Congress reaches out to investigators associated with Bragg, an elected Democrat who has denounced House Republican oversight as improper meddling in a criminal investigation. Bragg’s team has refused to comply with congressional document requests — even hanging up on a House Judiciary staffer after telling them to “stop calling us with this bulls–t.”

Trump allies also have focused on the role of former Biden Justice Department attorney Matthew Colongelo, who joined Bragg’s team in December to lead the Trump probe. Colangelo’s resume includes an appointment in 2017 as New York state’s executive deputy attorney general for social justice.

Bragg charged Trump under a novel legal theory for allegedly falsifying business records by not accurately describing hush-money payments made in 2016 to two women — porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal — alleging affairs with the then-Republican presidential nominee.

That charge ordinarily would be a misdemeanor with a two-year statute of limitations, but Bragg elevated the counts to felonies by alleging the infraction occurred to conceal other crimes — apparently federal campaign finance violations, though Bragg has been coy about that specific detail.

Federal candidates are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on their own campaigns, but then-Trump fixer Michael Cohen would have exceeded the federal contribution limit if he was using his own money to pay $130,000 to Daniels and $150,000 to McDougal, whose story was purchased by the National Enquirer in a “catch and kill” contract.

The Justice Department previously chose not to prosecute Trump on the campaign-finance charge following its failure in 2012 to convict former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC), who used more than $1 million in donor money to conceal his relationship and love child with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.