Republican lawmakers Thursday subpoenaed former Manhattan prosecutors who were running a Donald Trump criminal investigation and they resigned last year over differences over the direction the process was taking.
Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, ordered Mark Pomerantz to appear before April 30. The subpoena, seen by The Associated Press, is the latest escalation by Republicans in their investigation of Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg, days after Trump was charged with 34 criminal counts stemming from the plan to buy the silence of a porn actress.
Pomerantz voluntarily refused to cooperate with the committee’s request last month at the direction of Bragg’s office, which cited the ongoing investigation. The Manhattan prosecutor’s office has accused the Jordan committee of abusing its legal authority and violating the sovereignty of the state of New York.
Jordan wrote in a letter to Pomerantz that “given your unique role as special assistant prosecutor leading the investigation into President Trump’s finances, you are uniquely placed to provide pertinent information necessary to illustrate the Committee’s oversight and possible reforms. legislative”.
Pomerantz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans sided with Trump in calling the Bragg investigation “political persecution.” Jordan and other Republican lawmakers see Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, the day-to-day handlers of the investigation, as the catalysts for Bragg’s decision to move forward on the hush money case.
The two launched the investigation under then-prosecutor Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg asked them to continue when he took office in January. Vance and Bragg are Democrats.
Trump is accused of falsifying internal documents from his private company as he tried to cover up an attempt to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments and ensuring that allegations potentially damaging to his candidacy were silenced. The case includes 34 accusations of document falsification related to checks that Trump sent to his lawyer to reimburse payments to a porn actress who said she had extramarital sex with him years before.
Pomerantz wrote a book titled “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account ”in which he says that Vance authorized him in December 2021 to make the accusation against Trump. It presents the hush money payment — made or arranged by then-Trump attorney Michael Cohen — as the most complex case against the former president.
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