Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of Donald Trump’s fiercest allies in Congress, has issued a subpoena for a former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, escalating the House GOP’s attacks on a local jurisdiction as Republicans rally to aid the former president and defendant.
Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed former New York County special assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz to appear before the committee for a deposition.
The move by Jordan comes two days after Trump was charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The charges are centered on checks Trump wrote to reimburse his lawyer Michael Cohen for $130,000 paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty this week.
On Thursday, Bragg appeared to slam Jordan’s subpoena of Pomerantz as an attempt to interfere with his office’s case against Trump.
“The House GOP continues to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation,” Bragg said in a statement he posted to Twitter in response to a House Judiciary GOP tweet about Jordan’s subpoena.
“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 added. “These elected officials would better serve their constituents and their country, and fulfill their oath of office, by doing their jobs in Congress and not intruding on the sovereignty of the state of New York by interfering in an ongoing criminal matter in state court.”
In his subpoena letter to Pomerantz, Jordan notes that Pomerantz wrote a memoir describing his eagerness to investigate Trump. Jordan accused him of being biased in his 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’s public statements about the investigation strongly suggest that Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump is politically motivated,” Jordan said in a statement.
Pomerantz resigned from the team investigating Trump and the Trump Organization in February 2022, criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for not prosecuting Trump on the evidence that was already available.
“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” said a copy of Pomerantz’s resignation letter that was obtained then by The Washington Post. “In my view, the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump, and such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay.”
In his resignation letter, Pomerantz also criticized Bragg’s decision not to bring a case against Trump immediately as “misguided and completely contrary to the public interest.”
Pomerantz declined a request for comment Thursday.
Freshman Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who previously served as lead counsel for Democrats in the first impeachment trial against Trump, said that any testimony from Pomerantz should be conducted publicly “so all Americans can witness it for themselves.”
“Although this ‘investigation’ continues to be a gross abuse of power, I welcome the testimony of Mark Pomerantz,” Goldman wrote on Twitter.
Jordan has been in an ongoing standoff with Bragg, demanding materials related to his investigation into Trump’s hush money payments to Daniels. Bragg’s office has repeatedly rebuffed Jordan’s and other GOP lawmakers’ demands and accused them of “unlawful political interference” with a criminal investigation.
Though Jordan has also threatened to subpoena Bragg, he has not done so yet. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also make it clear Tuesday, after Trump’s arraignment, that the House GOP, now in the majority, would go after Bragg.
“Bragg’s weaponization of the federal justice process will be held accountable by Congress,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter.
Jordan’s demands of Bragg’s office have drawn sharp criticism from Democrats, who pointed out that the right-wing lawmaker ignored a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Jan. 6 committee later voted to refer Jordan and other GOP lawmakers who had also defied its subpoenas to the House Ethics Committee.
In one of his last acts as president, Trump awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian award — to Jordan in January 2021. The White House at the time praised Jordan, one of eight House lawmakers who were part of Trump’s defense team in his first Senate impeachment trial, for his work to “unmask the Russia hoax and take on Deep State corruption” and for his efforts to “confront the impeachment witch hunt.”