On this Aug. 12, 2002 file photo, attorney Mark Pomerantz arrives at Federal Court in Latest York. Latest York prosecutors, including recently hired former mafia prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, have met for an eighth time with former Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen as a part of a criminal investigation of the previous president’s funds.
David Karp | AP
A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked a House Judiciary Committee subpoena for testimony from a former Manhattan prosecutor who was involved in a criminal investigation of ex-President Donald Trump.
The order by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Latest York got here just hours before the previous prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, had been directed by a federal judge to sit down for a deposition with the committee.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is heading an unprecedented criminal case against Trump, the Republican former president and current leading presidential candidate, on charges of falsifying business records. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the fees, which relate to hush money payments made before the 2016 election to 2 women who allege that they had affairs with Trump.
The Republican-majority House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, launched an investigation into Bragg’s case, saying it was looking into whether the prosecution was politically motivated.
The committee subpoenaed Pomerantz, who had resigned from the DA’s office a number of months after Bragg took charge in January 2022. Pomerantz had been working on the office’s investigations of Trump under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr. In a resignation letter, Pomerantz said there was “little doubt” that Trump committed crimes and questioned Bragg’s apparent decision on the time to pause the probes into Trump.
In response to the subpoena to Pomerantz, Bragg sued the Judiciary Committee to attempt to block the previous prosecutor from testifying. Bragg’s civil suit argued that the congressional panel had “no power to supervise state criminal prosecutions.”
U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump nominee, on Wednesday denied Bragg’s effort to invalidate the subpoena for Pomerantz.
“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in reference to the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,'” Vyskocil wrote in federal court in Manhattan.
“Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. Nobody is above the law,” the judge wrote.
Her ruling, which got here after a hearing Monday, was contemptuous of Bragg’s lawsuit. “The primary 35 pages of the Grievance have little to do with the subpoena at issue and are nothing in need of a public relations tirade against former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump,” she wrote.
Jordan had argued that his committee has the fitting to probe Bragg’s work since the D.A.’s office receives some federal funds.
Pomerantz had also asked Vyskocil to dam the subpoena, saying in a filing that it puts him in an “unimaginable position.”
″If I refuse to offer information to the Committee, I risk being held in contempt of Congress and referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution. If, then again, I defy the District Attorney’s instructions and answer questions, I face possible legal or ethical consequences, including criminal prosecution,” Pomerantz wrote.
Bragg and Pomerantz each appealed Vyskocil’s ruling. On Thursday morning, the appeals court granted their request for a temporary stay so as to give a three-judge panel time to contemplate whether to proceed to dam the subpoena for longer pending the appeal.
The circuit court gave Jordan’s committee until Friday at 3 p.m. ET to answer.
