By Luc Cohen and Kanishka Singh
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday sued Republican U.S. Representative Jim Jordan to stop what Bragg called an “unconstitutional attack” on the ongoing criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump in New York.
The lawsuit aims to block a subpoena of Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who had led the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation of Trump. The subpoena, issued last week by the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs, seeks Pomerantz’s appearance before the committee for a deposition.
Trump, a Republican, pleaded not guilty last week to charges brought by Bragg’s office of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment made ahead of the 2016 election to buy a porn star’s silence about an affair she said she had with Trump.
Bragg, a Democrat, accused congressional Republicans of an “incursion” into a state criminal case.
“Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” Bragg’s office wrote in the lawsuit, accusing Jordan of searching for a pretext for “hauling Mr. Pomerantz to Washington for a retaliatory political circus.”
Pomerantz left the District Attorney’s office shortly after Bragg took over in early 2022 and declined to pursue an indictment of Trump based on a sprawling probe of his business practices.
Earlier this year, Pomerantz published a book criticizing Bragg’s decision not to pursue charges. He also said prosecutors had previously examined potential charges against Trump over the hush money payments, but were concerned they would rest on a novel legal theory that may not hold up in court.
In announcing the subpoena of Pomerantz last week, Jordan said Pomerantz’s public statements showed Bragg’s prosecution of Trump was politically motivated.
Bragg has said Pomerantz’s case was not ready.
“If he wishes to argue that his prosecution is ‘politically motivated,’ he is free to raise that concern to the New York state criminal court,” Bragg’s office wrote in the lawsuit.
“Chairman Jordan is not, however, free to unconstitutionally deploy Congress’s limited subpoena power for raw political retaliation, intimidation, or obstruction.”
The Judiciary Committee said on Monday it would hold a “field hearing” next week in New York about what it called “an increase in violent crime” caused by Bragg’s policies.
Bragg said murders, shootings, burglaries and robberies are all lower in Manhattan so far this year compared to last year.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Doina Chiacu, Leslie Adler and Bill Berkrot)
