April
25, 2024
Press Release
WASHINGTON,
D.C. – Today, the House Judiciary Committee
released an interim staff report titled, "An Anatomy of a Political Prosecution: The Manhattan District
Attorney's Office's Vendetta Against President Donald J. Trump." The
report reveals how the New York County District Attorney's Office's (DANY)
investigation and prosecution of President Trump is the product of
prosecutorial focus on one individual in search of a crime.
Read the full interim staff report here.
Interim Staff Report of the
Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
April 25, 2024
EXECUTIVE S UMMARY
If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows that he can
choose his defendants. Therein is the most dangerous power of the
prosecutor: that he will pick people that he thinks he should get,
rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.
– Attorney General Robert H. Jackson, April 1, 19401
The New York County District Attorney’s Office’s (DANY) multi-year
investigation into former President Donald J. Trump is unprecedented. As revealed in former
Special Assistant District Attorney Mark F. Pomerantz’s self-serving book, People vs. Trump: An
Insider’s Account,2 since at least 2018, the DANY has weaponized the criminal justice
system, scouring every aspect of President Trump’s personal life and business affairs, going
back decades, in the hopes of finding some legal basis—however far-fetched, novel, or convoluted—to
bring charges against him. When one legal theory would not pan out, instead of discontinuing its
politically motivated investigation, the DANY simply pivoted to a new theory, constantly
searching for a crime—any crime—to prosecute President Trump.
The story behind the DANY’s investigation into President Trump and the people involved illustrate the clear partisan aim of this case. Pomerantz is a former
federal prosecutor who eagerly volunteered to serve as a special assistant district attorney to
solely work on the efforts to prosecute President Trump.3 Working under former District Attorney
Cyrus Vance, Pomerantz assisted with “lead[ing] the effort” in developing a case against
President Trump until he abruptly resigned in February 2022 shortly after District Attorney Alvin
Bragg took office.4 Prior to his election, Bragg openly boasted about his experience suing the
Trump Administration “more than 100 times” and campaigned on a platform of “holding [President
Trump] accountable.”5 However, when Bragg did not move quickly enough to file charges
against President Trump,6 Pomerantz opted to go public, writing a book and
orchestrating a pressure campaign to force Bragg into action.7 And it worked.
Pomerantz’s book, described as a
“300-page exercise in score-settling and scorn,”8 revealed the extent to which the DANY’s investigation of President Trump was
politically motivated. Pomerantz described his eagerness to investigate President Trump,
writing that he was “delighted” to join an unpaid
group of lawyers advising on the Trump investigation, and joking that salary negotiations had
gone “great” because he would have paid to join the investigation.9 He baselessly
compared President Trump to notorious mob boss John Gotti,10 and claimed that
the District Attorney’s Office was “warranted in throwing the book” at
President Trump because, in Pomerantz’s view, the “collective weight” of
President Trump’s conduct over the years “left no doubt in [his] mind that
[President] Trump deserved to be prosecuted.”11 In other words, as a special
assistant district attorney empowered by New York County, Pomerantz seemed, for
reasons unrelated to the facts of this particular investigation, to have been
searching for any basis on which to bring politically motivated criminal
charges against President Trump.12
The DANY has been investigating
President Trump since at least 2018, searching for any legal theory on which to bring
charges.13 One legal theory pushed by Pomerantz suffered from serious deficiencies—notably the
credibility of the star witness, convicted perjurer Michael Cohen—so much so that the case
became known as the “zombie” case.14 On April 4, 2023, District Attorney Bragg succumbed to
Pomerantz’s pressure campaign, charging President Trump with 34 felony counts for
falsifying business records.15 These charges are normally misdemeanors subject to a two-year
statute of limitations, but Bragg used a novel and untested legal theory—previously declined by
federal prosecutors—to bootstrap the misdemeanor allegations as a felony, which
extended the statute of limitations to five years, by alleging that records were falsified to conceal a
second crime.16
The timing and basis for the DANY’s
prosecution of President Trump provide a clear inference that Bragg is motivated by
political calculations. The facts at the center of Bragg’s political prosecution have not
changed since 2018 and no new witnesses emerged between then and the date on which Bragg filed
the indictment.17 The Justice Department examined the facts in 2019 and chose not to prosecute
the case. Even still, according to reporting, Bragg “convened a new grand jury in January [2023]
to evaluate the issue.”18 Bragg ultimately settled on a novel legal theory untested anywhere in
the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue to resurrect the matter. The only
intervening factor, it appears, was President Trump’s announcement that he
would be a candidate for President in 2024.19
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.20 In response to Bragg’s decision to pursue a politically motivated prosecution—while adopting
progressive criminal justice policies that allow career “criminals [to] run[ ] the streets”
of Manhattan21—the Committee had an obligation to conduct oversight of Bragg’s unprecedented
and shocking prosecutorial conduct. The Committee used its constitutional oversight
responsibility to understand how public safety funds appropriated by Congress are implemented by local
law-enforcement agencies. In addition, Bragg’s decision to pursue criminal charges against a
former president and current declared candidate for that office required the Committee to consider
potential legislative reforms to insulate current and former Presidents from such politically
motivated state and local prosecutions.
To help inform the Committee’s
oversight, the Committee sought testimony from Pomerantz about his work on the
political prosecution of President Trump. Based on Pomerantz’s unique role as a special
assistant district attorney leading the investigation into President Trump, he was uniquely
situated to inform the Committee’s oversight and potential legislative reforms. Pomerantz’s
public discussion of the investigation in his book and his media tour undercut any argument that he
could not comply on the basis of confidentiality or privilege.22 Bragg sued to prevent
the Committee from interviewing Pomerantz; however, the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York agreed with the Committee and ordered Pomerantz to appear for a
deposition.23 On May 12, 2023, after stonewalling by Pomerantz and the DANY—including a
frivolous lawsuit—Pomerantz sat for a deposition.
When Pomerantz appeared before the
Judiciary Committee to discuss his book and politically motivated investigation,
he was unusually silent—refusing to answer even the most basic of questions. But Pomerantz’s
own words, as detailed in his book, paint a startling pictureof prosecutorial
abuse. Pomerantz’s own words show how the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office,
populated with partisans who openly bragged about their desire to get President
Trump, used its immense power in the persecution of a person, not a crime.
VII.
CONCLUSION
Despite Pomerantz’s refusal to answer questions throughout his deposition, his book makes one thing clear: from the start, the New York County District Attorney’s investigation, and later indictment, of President Trump is a product of prosecutorial focus on one individual in search of a crime. Pomerantz, in his own words, confirms what Americans instinctively know. Pomerantz was a politically motivated prosecutor who sought to use the immense resources available to him to charge President Trump under a novel legal theory and suspect evidence—evidence on which federal prosecutors refused to bring charges. Like Pomerantz, Bragg’s actions showed that he, too, was a politically motivated prosecutor. During his campaign, Bragg bragged about suing President Trump several times. The DANY allowed political motivations and animus to infect its prosecutorial discretion. As a result, the DANY now has a case that rests on questionable and untested legal grounds.265
The New York County District Attorney’s indictment of President Trump opened a dangerous new possibility of politically motivated prosecutions or threatened prosecutions of political opponents, including presidents. This case establishes a dangerously low threshold for these investigations and prosecutions to commence. With this indictment, Bragg has opened the door for future prosecutions of a former president—or current candidate—that would be widely perceived as politically motivated. As we have already seen, other prosecutors have followed Bragg’s lead and pursued politically motivated investigations and indictments of PresidentTrump.
The fundamental mission of any prosecutor’s office is to uphold the rule of law. And one of the hallmarks of this mission is to ensure that justice is blind—applied fairly and equally. Bragg’s politically motivated indictment of President Trump threatens to destroy this notion of blind justice by using the criminal justice system to attack an individual he disagrees with politically, and, in turn, eroding the confidence of the American people.
