The trial that began last week in a Manhattan courtroom is a travesty of justice. There’s no two ways around it. For the first time ever in American history, a politically elected prosecutor is trying to jail a former president and current declared candidate for that office. This prosecution, coming less than seven months before the presidential election, threatens to undermine the election and ultimately harm our democracy.
The allegations behind Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump are not new. In fact, all the key points have been known since 2018. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleaded guilty to charges based on these same facts five years ago. At the time, federal prosecutors determined that no one else would be charged alongside Cohen, closing the case.
Like their federal counterparts, prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office were initially skeptical of pursuing a case against Trump on these facts. Former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance passed on the case. Bragg, Vance’s successor, was ready to pass too, until a volunteer prosecutor in his office named Mark Pomerantz resigned in protest and went public criticizing Bragg. Pomerantz’s scathing resignation letter was leaked to the New York Times, and he even penned a book taking Bragg to task for not being more aggressive in going after Trump. If Pomerantz couldn’t convince Bragg to bring charges in private, he would do it publicly.
Pomerantz’s book, described by one reviewer as 300 pages of “score-settling and scorn,” lays bare the political animus motivating the prosecution of Trump. Pomerantz wrote about the thrill he got from investigating Trump and noted he would have gladly paid for the opportunity to prosecute the former president. The book described how Pomerantz pushed Bragg to resurrect the so-called “zombie” case using a convoluted and unprecedented legal theory.
To get around the statute of limitations on what are ordinarily misdemeanor charges, prosecutors could bootstrap the misdemeanor allegations into felonies by alleging that the records were falsified to conceal a second (and still undefined) crime.
Bragg ultimately succumbed to the pressure campaign, filing charges in April 2023 based on Pomerantz’s blueprint. Bragg built his case around the testimony of his star witness, Michael Cohen. But to say Cohen has a credibility problem is an understatement.
By Reps. Jim Jordan, Nicole Malliotakis, Jeff Van Drew
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