House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has subpoenaed a former Manhattan prosecutor who pushed for an indictment against former President Donald Trump. The move came days after Trump pleaded not guilty to felony charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a prosecution that has ignited outrage from Republicans.
Pomerantz, who authored a book titled “People vs. Donald Trump,” was a Manhattan prosecutor under District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg. Pomerantz earlier led an investigation into Trump’s finances but resigned in February 2022 because of Bragg’s initial unwillingness to pursue a criminal case.
The subpoena comes after Pomerantz rejected an offer to testify voluntarily. Pomerantz said he was instructed to refuse by the Manhattan DA’s office.
“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,” Jordan wrote to Pomerantz.
On April 4, Trump appeared at the New York Supreme Court, where Bragg’s office charged him with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which Trump denies.
Trump has maintained his innocence, saying the case is politically motivated, a refrain echoed by many Republicans.
Jordan, in the letter, rejected the notion that Pomerantz has any justifiable reason to reject the summons, noting that he had addressed the issue several times before in his book and on prime-time television appearances.
In response to the subpoena, Bragg’s office accused House Republicans of attempting to “undermine” an active investigation and criminal case “with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation.”
Alleged Political Motives
Jordan also suggested that Pomerantz’s personal contempt for Trump, as revealed in his book, could have played a role in his push to have Trump indicted.The lawmaker cited a review of Pomerantz’s book that described it as “a 300-page exercise in score-settling and scorn.”
He said the book “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.”
For instance, at one point in the book, the letter stated, Pomerantz joked that he would have paid money to have the chance to prosecute Trump. At another point, Pomerantz opined that the Manhattan DA’s office would be “warranted in throwing the book” at Trump because he “had become a master of breaking the law in ways that were difficult to reach.”
“In other words,” Jordan wrote, “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.
House GOP Probes
Since the announcement of the indictment against Trump, Jordan has issued requests for testimony from Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, another former Manhattan prosecutor who resigned at the same time as Pomerantz.Leslie Dubeck, general counsel for the Manhattan DA’s office, in a March 23 letter responding to GOP request, wrote that complying “would interfere with law enforcement,” the requests for documents and communications “violate New York’s sovereignty,” and a “congressional review of a pending criminal investigation usurps executive powers.”
In his April 6 letter, Jordan responded to these criticisms, saying that his investigations are entirely legal.
“The Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has a ‘broad and indispensable’ power to conduct oversight, which ‘encompasses inquiries into the administration of existing laws, studies of proposed laws, and surveys in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling Congress to remedy them,’” Jordan wrote.
Further, Jordan said that Congress has “a specific and manifestly important interest” in “preventing politically motivated prosecutions of current and former Presidents by elected state and local prosecutors, particularly in jurisdictions—like New York County—where the prosecutor is popularly elected and trial-level judges lack life tenure.”
If such a case were allowed to stand, Jordan said, it could negatively affect the actions of future presidents fearful of meeting a similar fate.
“A President could choose to avoid taking action he believes to be in the national interest because it would negatively impact New York City for fear that he would be subject to a retaliatory prosecution in New York City,” Jordan wrote.
Thus, Jordan said, the investigation requires congressional oversight to consider reforms that could “insulate” a president from such an outcome.
Pomerantz’s law firm didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
