A federal judge has denied Alvin Bragg‘s motion to block a subpoena issued by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan to a former top prosecutor who resigned after the Manhattan District Attorney appeared to shutter his investigation into Donald Trump.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, appointed by then-President Donald Trump, rejected DA Bragg’s request that Mark Pomerantz not be required to testify. Pomerantz is one of two now-former prosecutors hired by Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance, to investigate what appear to be questionable if not unlawful aspects of Trump’s finances, including the massive fluctuations in the stated valuations of his properties.
That investigation, under Bragg, is focused on Trump’s hush money payoff to Stormy Daniels and his possibly unlawful claims the payments were for legal expenses. Trump was indicted on 34 felony violations.
“The request by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. for a temporary restraining order, enjoining enforcement of the subpoena issued to Mark F. Pomerantz by the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States House of Representatives, chaired by Congressman Jim Jordan, is DENIED,” Judge Vyskocil’s order reads, which Law & Crime’s Adam Klasfeld posted. “The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations.’ It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection.”
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“Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition,” Vyskocil determined.
“No one is above the law,” she snarked, a sentence Klasfeld pointed to, and called “Notable.”
“Here,” he writes, “she deploys the phrase often used on the former president against Bragg’s ex-deputy Mark Pomerantz.”
Author and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Zirin, responding to CNN’s report of Judge Vyskocil’s ruling writes, “I predicted this.”
“Vyskocil is New York’s Judge Cannon. Note the snide riposte: ‘No one is above the law.'”
Zirin was referring to the discredited Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon, who appeared to be protecting the ex-president from the bench.
Judge Vyskocil added, “In our federalist system, elected state and federal actors sometimes engage in political dogfights. Bragg complains of political interference in the local DANY case, but Bragg does not operate outside of the political arena. Bragg is presumptively acting in good faith. That said, he is an elected prosecutor in New York County with constituents, some of whom wish to see Bragg wield the force of law against the former President and a current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Jordan, in turn, has initiated a political response to what he and some of his constituents view as a manifest abuse of power and nakedly political prosecution, funded (in part) with federal money, that has the potential to interfere with the exercise of presidential duties and with an upcoming federal election.”
“The Court does not endorse either side’s agenda,” Vyskocil says. “The sole question before the Court at this time is whether Bragg has a legal basis to quash a congressional subpoena that was issued with a valid legislative purpose. He does not.”
In discussing Jordan’s targeting of DA Bragg and his use of his Judiciary Committee to do so, former U.S Attorney Barb McQuade on MSNBC Wednesday called it “an absolute abuse of power.”
Read a portion of the order below or at this link.