Trump: I can win New York in 2024
Former President Trump talks stock market meltdown, presidential immunity and setting his sights on winning New York before heading to court.
Unique: The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office “allowed political motivations The House Judiciary Committee argued in a report Thursday that the charges against former President Trump were false and used a “dangerously low threshold” for prosecuting “political opponents.”
The GOP-led committee on Thursday released a 300-page report, obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital, titled “An Anatomy of a Political Prosecution: Manhattan District Attorney’s Office President Donald J. “Is acting out of a vendetta against Trump.”
The committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is investigating the “unprecedented” multi-year investigation of Trump led by the Manhattan DA’s office since last year, when current DA Alvin Bragg indicted Trump.
Bragg charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying first-degree business records related to alleged hush money payments before the 2016 presidential election. Trump declared himself innocent. His criminal trial is currently ongoing in New York City.
Former President Donald Trump faces criminal trial in Manhattan court (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, Pool)
“DANY has been investigating President Trump since at least 2018, looking for any legal theory on which to base charges,” the report said. “These charges are typically subject to the misdemeanor’s two-year statute of limitations, but Bragg used a novel and untested legal theory to establish the misdemeanor charges as a felony—one that federal prosecutors had previously rejected. which extended the statute of limitations to five years, alleging that records were falsified to conceal another crime.”
Prosecutors revealed during the criminal trial this week that the alleged “second crime” was a violation of a New York law called “conspiracy to promote or interfere with an election.” Prosecutors will try to prove that the alleged conspiracy was to conceal a conspiracy to illegally promote his candidacy.
“The facts at the center of Bragg’s political prosecution have not changed since 2018 and no new witnesses have come forward between then and the date Bragg filed the indictment,” the report said. “The Justice Department investigated the facts in 2019 and decided not to prosecute the case.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
But the report notes that even with the DOJ’s decision, Bragg has “convened a new grand jury in January (2023) to evaluate this issue.”
Trump trial: Former president ‘innocent’, defense says as DA alleges ‘criminal conspiracy’
The report stated, “Bragg ultimately decided on a new legal theory that had not been tested anywhere in the country and federal officials declined to move to revive the case.”
The Republican said that “it appears that the only intervening factor was President Trump’s announcement that he will be a candidate for president in 2024.”
The report states that Congress “has a specific and clearly significant interest in preventing politically motivated prosecutions of current and former presidents by elected state and local prosecutors, particularly in jurisdictions such as New York County – where prosecutors are popularly formally elected and trial-level judges lack lifetime tenure.”
US Representative Jim Jordan holds a press conference at the US Capitol. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The report said Bragg’s decision to bring charges against Trump after he became a presidential nominee “called for consideration of potential legislative reforms to protect current and former presidents from such politically motivated state and local prosecutions.” There was a need for a committee.”
New York prosecutors uncover ‘another crime’ as Trump allegedly tried to hide false business records
Former Manhattan DA prosecutor Mark Pomerantz testified before the committee in a deposition as part of the investigation. Pomerantz declined to answer most questions, but told the committee this was largely due to the then-pending investigation of Trump.
Pomerantz, a donor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, previously worked on the Trump investigation with former prosecutor Kerry Dunn under Bragg’s predecessor, former Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance. Pomerantz and Dunn both resigned after raising doubts about Bragg taking over and pursuing the case against Trump.
After Pomerantz resigned, he wrote a tell-all book based on the investigation, which was still ongoing. The book appears to have made a case for impeaching Trump.
Former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz testifies about Trump investigation (William B. Plowman/NBC via Getty Images)
The committee cited Pomerantz’s book, which it said “reveals his animosity against Trump personally and politically.”
Pomerantz wrote about his “enthusiasm to work on the investigation” in his book, but said it had “nothing to do with (his) views about Trump’s politics.” However, he acknowledged that he was “not a fan” of Trump, and had “very little respect” for him.
Trump faces a maximum sentence of 136 years in prison for the 34-count indictment
Chairman Jim Jordan told Fox News Digital on Thursday that Pomerantz “left retirement to pursue a passion project of impeaching President Trump.”
“He sought all possible means to remove the President from office. When nothing happened, he left Alvin Bragg’s office in frustration and wrote a book aimed at creating public pressure to charge Bragg with something — and it worked,” Jordan said. “The whole trial is completely political and everyone knows it.”
The committee said that Bragg’s tenure as district attorney contributed to increased crime in New York City.
“The backdrop to District Attorney Bragg’s decision to find no cause of action to prosecute President Trump are Bragg’s actions to institute pro-crime, anti-victim policies, which have resulted in an increase in violent crime and a decline in the lives of New York City residents. A dangerous community has been created.”
Bragg issued a preliminary memo directing assistant DAs to avoid prosecuting certain crimes, including trespassing and prostitution.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams and District Attorney Alvin Bragg ((AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews))
The memorandum states that armed robberies should not be prosecuted as felonies. Instead, the new DA directed armed robberies to be treated as misdemeanor theft unless someone was shot during the robbery. Bragg also said his office would not seek prison sentences except for murders and other particularly “heinous crimes” such as domestic violence, sexual crimes, and public corruption.
The committee said Bragg’s conviction of Trump “opens up a dangerous new possibility of politically motivated prosecutions or threatened prosecutions against political opponents, including presidents.”
“This case sets a dangerously low threshold for initiating these investigations and prosecutions,” the report said, adding that Bragg “has called for any future prosecution of a former president – or current candidate – “Opened the door to what will be widely considered politically motivated.”
Committee Republicans said Bragg inspired other prosecutors to pursue “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of President Trump.”
Flashback: Top prosecutor in Manhattan DA case against Trump’s resignation
Former President Donald Trump attends the first day of his criminal trial in Manhattan Criminal Court on April 15, 2024 in New York City. (Angela Weiss/AFP via AP Pool)
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“The fundamental mission of any prosecutor’s office is to uphold the rule of law,” the report said. “And one of the hallmarks of this mission is to ensure that justice is blind – applied fairly and equally. Bragg’s politically motivated impeachment of President Trump violates this notion of blind justice by using the criminal justice system to attack that person. “Threats to destroy any organization with which it disagrees politically, and, in turn, is undermining the confidence of the American people.”
Bragg’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
