#Mark Pomerantz

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Merry Christmas Colangelo & Pomerantz

"First Cyrus 'Cy' Vance Jr (DA) has Mark Pomarantz (Special Assistant DA/Authr People vs Donald Trump author/Hillary's Attorney) and Dunne cracking the whip on him, then Schumer and Preetinder 'Preet' Singh Bhahara (US Attorney SDNY) show up at his Birthday in October to spank him - Matt Colangelo in December threatening to break his kneecaps- then the leaks and more leaks until he gives in with Cy Vance's garbage case. Uh....this won't be a swell time. This guy is going to find out Soros doesn't pay court costs or keep you out of prison. This in one pile of dog stuff he's going to be sorry he jumped into. Trump will be after his backside too. This man had better lawyer up."

Exclusive: Jim Jordan Subpoenas Manhattan Prosecutor Who Resigned over Suspended Trump Probe April 6, 2023

House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) escalated Republicans’ investigation into the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment of former President Donald Trump by subpoenaing a prosecutor on Thursday who resigned from the office last year over the district attorney’s initial reluctance to pursue Trump’s case.

Jordan’s subpoena, reviewed by Breitbart News, directs Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office in February 2022, to appear before the committee for a deposition on April 20.

In a cover letter accompanying the subpoena, Jordan said his committee had legislative reasons to demand Pomerantz’s testimony.

“Congress has a specific and manifestly important interest in preventing politically motivated prosecutions of current and former Presidents by elected state and local prosecutors, particularly in jurisdictions—like New York County—where the prosecutor is popularly elected and trial-level judges lack life tenure,” Jordan wrote.

Pomerantz, a former special assistant assigned to the years-long Trump case, exited the Manhattan district attorney’s office right after Bragg took over. The move became a public affair when his resignation letter appeared in the New York Times last March.

Pomerantz wrote in the letter to Bragg that he believed Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations” related to his financial statements and that he was

quitting because he thought Bragg’s decision at the time to “indefinitely” suspend the investigation into Trump was “misguided.”

Jordan observed, based on the resignation letter, that Pomerantz had “prejudged the results” of the investigation and that his critical words of Bragg seemingly sparked the district attorney to openly declare that the Trump investigation was “far from over.”

In November 2022, one week after Trump announced he was running for president again, the Times reported that Bragg had revived the Trump investigation and had zeroed in on a hush money scheme involving porn star Stormy Daniels and Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen.

“For Mr. Bragg, the hush-money developments suggest the first signs of progress since he took office at the beginning of the year, when he balked at indicting Mr. Trump in connection with his business practices,” the outlet reported at the time.

Pomerantz later went on to publish a book about the matter, called People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, in which Pomerantz discussed internal concerns people had about the investigation and worries about the credibility of Cohen, a convicted felon.

“You describe your eagerness to investigate President Trump, writing that you were ‘delighted’ to join an unpaid group of lawyers advising on the Trump investigations, and joking that salary negotiations had gone ‘great’ because you would have paid to join the investigation,” Jordan wrote of the book.

He added that Pomerantz “frivolously” compared Trump to John Gotti, a notorious New York City mob boss, and described him as a “malignant narcissist.”

“The depth of your personal animosity towards him is apparent in your writing,” Jordan concluded.

The subpoena marks Republicans’ strongest move yet in its investigation of the New York County’s indictment of Trump amid questions from some about Congress’s authority to probe open state-level criminal matters.

It comes after Jordanfirst contacted Pomerantz on March 22 seeking his testimony, as well as documents and communication related to the Trump investigation.

Jordan in his subpoena cover letter referenced correspondence on March 25 from Bragg to Pomerantz, which Breitbart News has reviewed, in which Bragg instructed Pomerantz, a private citizen, not to provide Congress with any materials relevant to Pomerantz’s work at the district attorney’s office.

Pomerantz then told the committee on March 27 that he would be complying with Bragg’s instructions rather than Jordan’s requests.🙄

Jordan contended Thursday, however, that Pomerantz is “uniquely situated” to provide insight to the Judiciary Committee and that

he has “no basis to decline to testify” given he has already made detailed accounts of his work on the Trump probe widely public.

EXCLUSIVE: House Judiciary Expands Investigation Into Manhattan DA Over Trump Indictment April 7, 2023

The Federalist: The House Judiciary Committee is expanding its investigation into the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office over last week’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.

On Friday, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Manhattan DA Senior Counsel Matthew Colangelo, shared with The Federalist, requesting a transcribed interview. 

According to the New York Times in December, Colangelo was hired four months ago to “jump start” Bragg’s Trump investigations after years spent going after the former president at both the Department of Justice and the New York attorney general’s office.

“Given your history of working for law-enforcement entities that are pursuing President Trump and the public reporting surrounding your decision to work for the New York County District Attorney’s Office, we request your cooperation with our oversight in your personal capacity,” Jordan wrote.

Trump pled not guilty at the historic arraignment Tuesday against a 34-count felony indictment carrying a maximum 136-year prison sentence. The charges stem from 2016 hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels in a case prosecutors previously declined to pursue.

The weak nature of the case has led a dozen liberal law professors and Trump antagonists to call the prosecution a dead end.

The House Judiciary chairman reminded Colangelo of Congress’s authority to probe the Manhattan DA’s office after Bragg has spent weeks resisting lawmakers’ oversight requests. Fox News reported Wednesday the back and forth has led the Committee to consider issuing formal subpoenas for Bragg’s office. On Thursday, lawmakers pulled the trigger on a subpoena for Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor under Bragg who resigned last year over slow progress on efforts to arrest Trump.

Jordan revealed on Fox News Monday that Bragg conceded to lawmakers his office used federal funds in the Manhattan DA’s Trump investigation.

“The Committee may therefore consider legislation to enhance reporting requirements concerning the use of federal forfeiture funds and/or to prohibit the use of federal forfeiture funds to investigate a current or former President or presidential candidate,” Jordan wrote in the letter to Colangelo.

The committee is demanding Colangelo hand over documents related to his hiring and sit down for a formal interview. Colangelo was given until April 21 to provide lawmakers with a schedule of availability.

While the Manhattan DA’s office braces for aggressive oversight from House Republicans, members of Bragg’s staff deleted online profiles. The “Meet Our Team” page was also scrubbed from Bragg’s website.

Trump’s indictment last week drew immediate condemnation from House Republicans and the former president’s rivals in the 2024 primary but has been met with silence by Senate GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

#Matthew Colangelo #Mark Pomerantz #merry chrisis #alvin bragg is a dirty cop #nyc #sdny #lawfare #obama is scum #biden is obama's puppet #revenge #free trump #get trump

[gwydionmisha]

#Donald Trump #SDNY #Mark Pomerantz #News

[juanchoandmielnewsdesk]

#alvin bragg #bragg #trump #mark pomerantz #pomerantz

[dailyfreier]

Jerusalem Cafe offers dishes made 100% from ingredients they schnorred off Secret Jerusalem

By Mark Levy & Aaron Pomerantz Last Updated 8/28/2023 at 1:50 PM Jerusalem, Machane Yehuda: The city’s Foodie community is abuzz today with news of the latest Hot Pop-Up in the Machane Yehuda market. “Yoni’s Crowdsource Kitchen” has a diverse menu consisting of Israeli favorites, Italian dishes, Tapas, and even some Asian Fusion. But here’s the catch. they don’t own a refrigerator. Or a freezer.…

View On WordPress

#Aaron Pomerantz #Jerusalem #Jonny Stark #Machane Yehuda #Mark Levy #pop up stores #Secret Jerusalem #Secret Tel Aviv #Shimshon Leshinksy #Start Up Nation #Welcome to Israel

[garudabluffs]

"So, you know, it's a nice apartment, but $327 million? I don't think so."

"The bank required as a condition of making the loan and accepting the guarantee that Donald Trump verify that the financial statements he supplied to the bank were true and accurate in all material respects and that they accurately reflected his financial condition. And they didn't. They overstated his net worth. They overstated the value of his assets by literally billions of dollars. For each year that he submitted personal financial statements to the bank - and the bank required them to be updated annually - the financial statements were massively inflated. And that's a crime."

"We developed evidence that he had been involved in providing the values for particular assets to the people in the Trump Organization whose job it was to compile these numbers."

"And we had evidence that he had a history of exaggerating and indeed lying and misleading people about his net worth and the value of his assets. And bear in mind, each financial statement indicated that he, Donald Trump, was responsible for the preparation of the financial statements, responsible for the numbers that they contained. They're his assets. The financial statements were used for his benefit. They were prepared by people who worked for him and who followed his directions. And so we thought the circumstances made out a pretty compelling case that he was indeed personally responsible for the misstatements."

"So when you put all the proof together, we thought we had a compelling picture of what had happened, and what had happened was criminal conduct."

"So to me, the calculus was clear. The case was justified on the facts. It was justified on the law. We had a reasonable chance to win. The interests of justice factors were compelling."

LISTEN READ MORE Transcript https://www.npr.org/2023/02/07/1155036591/former-prosecutor-says-manhattan-da-could-have-charged-trump-with-multiple-crime

6 things about ex-Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz’s new book on the case against Trump

"Pomerantz says Trump’s alleged crimes — from systematically inflating property values to paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels — amount to a decadeslong pattern of corruption comparable to that of a Mafia family."

“His empire was built on lies,” Pomerantz wrote.

READ MORE https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-book-manhattan-prosecutor-mark-pomerantz-book-20230207-hvle4qjnbvdjvozyf6goakvip4-story.html

#Trump People vs. author interview Mark Pomerantz

[bighermie]

Former Prosecutor Against Trump Takes the Fifth in Deposition Before GOP Committee

Former Prosecutor Against Trump Takes the Fifth in Deposition Before GOP Committee https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/former-trump-prosecutor-takes-the-fifth-in-deposition-before-gop-committee_5263184.html?utm_source=andshare

What did that tell you? Corrupt fuckers!

[cultml]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 6, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Supreme Court was in the news this morning, as Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica explained that for more than twenty years Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has enjoyed the hospitality and funding of Dallas real estate magnate and major Republican donor Harlan Crow. Thomas and his wife Ginni, who was closely involved in challenging the 2020 presidential election, have taken trips in private jets and gone on vacations with Crow worth as much as $500,000.

Thomas did not disclose any of these valuable gifts. Indeed, in a documentary funded in part by Crow, Thomas presented himself as a regular guy. “I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There’s something normal to me about it,” he said. “I come from regular stock, and I prefer that—I prefer being around that.”

After the story dropped, David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times recalled that his newspaper had disclosed the close connections between Thomas and Crow in 2004, noting, for example, that Crow had given Thomas a $19,000 Bible that had belonged to the famous formerly enslaved abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass and a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln. After their story appeared, it seems that Thomas did not stop accepting expensive gifts and travel from the wealthy mogul, but instead stopped disclosing them.

In Crow’s company, Thomas rubbed elbows with his host’s other guests, including senior business executives, major Republican donors, and leaders of right-wing think tanks. Crow has worked hard to move the judiciary and the legal system to the right, and at one of the properties where Thomas vacations, there is a painting of him in conversation with a number of figures, including Leonard Leo, the leader of the Federalist Society who has orchestrated the court’s hard-right turn. Leo is now overseeing Marble Freedom Trust, established to disburse funds from a $1.6 billion bequest to manipulate elections in favor of Republicans.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) tweeted: “Important for news media to not simply label this guy as a ‘[Republican] mega donor’. It’s so much worse. Crow has many interests before the Supreme Court. His groups file petitions before the court. It’s the clearest, most brazen violation of judicial ethics you can imagine.”

In Congress today, House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) issued a subpoena in its investigation of the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office after that office indicted former president Donald Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records on Tuesday. Bragg explained: “The trail of money & lies exposes a pattern that, the People allege, violates one of New York’s basic & fundamental business laws.”

Although Jordan himself refused to respond to a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, he is demanding that Mark Pomerantz, a former county special assistant district attorney who investigated Trump’s finances, show up to testify.

Pomerantz resigned from his role in the investigation out of frustration that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg was not then moving forward with an indictment. The wording of Jordan’s letter indicates he is hoping to use Pomerantz’s words critical of Trump to argue that the district attorney’s office was biased against the former president.

General counsel for the Manhattan district attorney’s office Leslie Dubeck previously rejected the demands of Jordan, House Committee on House Administration chair Bryan Steil (R-WI), and  House Committee on Oversight and Accountability chair James Comer (R-KY) for testimony and documents from Bragg, warning them that their attacks on Bragg and his office were “unlawful political interference.”

Dubeck pointed out: “our Office is legally constrained in how it publicly discusses pending criminal proceedings,… as you well know.” She called their interference “unnecessary and unjustified” and reminded the men that Congress has no jurisdiction over individual criminal investigations. Nor does it have jurisdiction over state investigations. “The Committees’ attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation—and now prosecution—is an unprecedented and illegitimate incursion on New York’s sovereign interests,” she wrote.

Now Jordan is trying a different approach. Bragg responded: “The House [Republicans continue] to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation. Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law.”

In the Tennessee statehouse this afternoon, Republican legislators led by House of Representatives speaker Cameron Sexton voted to expel Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black lawmakers who had led young protesters in chants from the floor of the house chamber in favor of gun safety legislation after house Republicans refused to allow debate on such a measure.

The Republicans charged that the three representatives had broken house rules and had engaged in “disorderly behavior” and “knowingly and intentionally” brought “dishonor to the House of Representatives.” The body avoided expelling Gloria Johnson, the white woman who chanted with Jones and Pearson, by one vote. Although the debate showed that a Republican had also broken house rules by recording a video that was then misleadingly edited and shown, that representative was not charged.

The three Democratic representatives joined protesters to call for gun safety legislation after six people, including three 9-year-olds, were killed in yet another school shooting. The Republicans have focused on cultural issues and have opposed taking up gun safety legislation. Indeed, they have worked to loosen gun laws; on the same day as the recent school shooting, a federal judge cleared the way for the Tennessee legislature to lower the age for permitless carry in the state from 21 to 18. Republican governor Bill Lee signed the permitless carry bill for 21 and up in 2021 at a Beretta gun manufacturing plant.

Today, young protesters in the statehouse defended the Tennessee Three, as they have become known, saying: “You ban books, you ban drag—kids are still in body bags!” After the votes to expel, the chants changed to “F*ck you, fascists!”

Republicans in the Tennessee legislature could act as they did because they have a supermajority thanks to their redistricting of the state after the 2020 census. In that redistricting they cracked Democratic-leaning Nashville, dividing it among three districts in which they overwhelmed Democratic voters with Republicans from the suburbs. A new state law has now required Nashville to cut its city council in half. Meanwhile, laws prohibiting people with a past felony conviction from voting cut more than 470,000 people from the voter rolls.

This lock on power has given Tennessee Republicans the ability to do as they please. Today it pleased them to expel two young Black legislators who were trying to force the Republicans to do something about the epidemic of gun violence that is killing their constituents.

The Supreme Court, Congress, and the Tennessee statehouse. What would you say if you saw today’s news coming from another country?

Before he left the chamber, Representative Justin Pearson told his suddenly former colleagues how he saw it.

“You are seeking to expel District 86’s representation from this house, in a country that was built on a protest. IN A COUNTRY THAT WAS BUILT ON A PROTEST. You who celebrate July 4, 1776, pop fireworks and eat hotdogs. You say to protest is wrong because you spoke out of turn, because you spoke up for people who are marginalized. You spoke up for children who won’t ever be able to speak again; you spoke up for parents who don’t want to live in fear; you spoke up for Larry Thorn, who was murdered by gun violence; you spoke up for people that we don’t want to care about. In a country built on people who speak out of turn, who spoke out of turn, who fought out of turn to build a nation.

“I come from a long line of people who have resisted.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Tennessee Three #Clarence Thomas #Corrupt GOP #Criminal GOP #fascism #gerrymandering #Corrupt SCOTUS #gun violence #protest #Resist

[shollowsource]

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is suing House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican, over what the lawsuit describes as a "transparent campaign to intimidate and attack" the district attorney and interfere in his office's case against former President Donald Trump.

Bragg is seeking to block a subpoena for testimony from Mark Pomerantz, a former senior prosecutor in his office, as well as other demands for "confidential documents and testimony from the district attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials."

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

Unbelievable: Alvin Bragg Sues Jim Jordan in Move to "Block Interference" 🙄

Mr. Jordan, a Republican from Ohio, had subpoenaed a former prosecutor who worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Bragg’s lawsuit is an escalation in the confrontation between his office and the House Judiciary Committee, which Jim Jordan chairs.

By Jonah E. Bromwich, Maggie Haberman, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum

April 11, 2023Updated 3:58 p.m. ET

The Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday sued Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio in an extraordinary step intended to keep congressional Republicans from interfering in the office’s criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump.

The 50-page suit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, accuses Mr. Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Bragg last week unveiled 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump that stem from the former president’s attempts to cover up a potential sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.

Lawyers for Mr. Bragg are seeking to bar Mr. Jordan and his congressional allies from enforcing a subpoena sent to Mark F. Pomerantz, who was once a leader of the district attorney’s Trump investigation and who later wrote a book about that experience. Mr. Pomerantz resigned early last year after Mr. Bragg, just weeks into his first term in office, decided not to seek an indictment of Trump at that time.

Mr. Bragg’s lawyers, including Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. of the law firm Gibson Dunn and Leslie B. Dubeck, the general counsel in the district attorney’s office, also intend to prevent any other such subpoenas, the lawsuit says. Mr. Jordan has left open the possibility of subpoenaing Mr. Bragg.

“Rather than allowing the criminal process to proceed in the ordinary course, Chairman Jordan and the committee are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation and obstruction,” the suit said, adding that the district attorney’s office had received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump’s supporters — many of them “threatening and racially charged” — since the former president predicted his own arrest last month.

Mr. Jordan responded in a statement on Twitter.

“First, they indict a president for no crime,” he wrote. “Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.”

Last month, Mr. Jordan, in his role as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, sent letters with two Republican colleagues that demanded the district attorney’s office provide communications, documents and testimony about Mr. Bragg’s investigation of Mr. Trump. In the letters, the Republican congressmen defended their right to conduct oversight of the case.

And after Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors unveiled the charges against Mr. Trump last week, Mr. Jordan issued the subpoena to Mr. Pomerantz, seeking to compel a closed-door deposition.

In response to the letters’ focus on federal funds, the district attorney’s office said that it had spent about $5,000 worth of federal money on investigations into Mr. Trump and his company between October 2019 and August 2021, most of it on litigation related to a court battle with Mr. Trump over access to his tax returns.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Bragg said that the subpoena to Mr. Pomerantz was “an unconstitutional attempt to undermine an ongoing New York felony criminal prosecution and investigation.” Mr. Boutrous, in his own statement, said that the suit aimed “to protect local law enforcement and state court criminal proceedings in this country against impermissible intrusions from the federal government.”

Mr. Pomerantz is also named as a defendant in the suit, though that appears to be a formality. By naming him, Mr. Bragg’s lawyers are seeking to block Mr. Pomerantz from testifying if he was legally compelled to do so. Mr. Pomerantz has shown no indication that he is willing to testify voluntarily. He declined to comment on Tuesday.

Mr. Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has accused Mr. Bragg of prosecuting Mr. Trump for political reasons.

In his book, published earlier this year, Mr. Pomerantz described his view of Mr. Trump’s actions as plainly criminal, as well as his frustrations with Mr. Bragg when he took office in 2022 and did not charge Mr. Trump. That decision led Mr. Pomerantz and another of the investigation’s leaders, Carey Dunne, to resign.

Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne — holdovers from the prior district attorney’s administration — were primarily focused on whether Mr. Trump had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets, but Mr. Bragg was not confident in their case.

After they left, he and his aides returned to the hush-money payment made during the final days of the 2016 campaign to a porn star, Stormy Daniels — conduct that Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had investigated but decided not to place at the center of a criminal case against the former president.

Mr. Bragg impaneled a grand jury to hear evidence about Mr. Trump’s role in the hush money in January. The jurors voted to indict Mr. Trump late last month.

Last month, Mr. Trump announced on his social media website, Truth Social, that he was going to be arrested three days later. The claim was false — no indictment had been voted on at the time — but it set in motion extensive defenses of Mr. Trump by allies in the Republican-led Congress, who vowed to investigate the district attorney. Along with the letters to Mr. Bragg’s office, Mr. Jordan and two other Republican committee chairmen sent letters to Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne demanding documents and testimony related to the case.

Mr. Jordan’s committee on Monday announced its plans for the “field hearing” in New York City on April 17. It is apparently intended to suggest that Mr. Bragg has focused on the prosecution of Mr. Trump rather than Manhattan’s crime rate.

On Monday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office characterized the hearing as a “political stunt” and pointed toward Police Department data that shows murders, shootings and burglaries are down in Manhattan this year.

#free trump #revenge #who is former manhattan special assistant da mark pomerantz and where is he now? #Colangelo #nyc #political persecution #alvin bragg is a dirty cop

[gwydionmisha]

The rest of the interview: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-ball-of-wax-racketeering-case-too-big-for-local-ny-prosecutor-resources-pomerantz-162764357878

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-case-cried-out-for-federal-investigation-pomerantz-162764869881

#Mark Pomerantz #Donald Trump #SDNY #News

[kp777]

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg sued House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a move intended to stop House Republicans from interfering in his ongoing criminal case against former President Donald Trump, reported the New York Times.

The Times called the suit an “extraordinary” move and added that “the 50-page suit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, accuses Mr. Jordan of a ‘brazen and unconstitutional attack’ on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a ‘transparent campaign to intimidate and attack’ the district attorney.”

The Manhattan DA’s lawsuit accuses Jordan of “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg, making demands for confidential documents and testimony from the District Attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials.”

Bragg indicted Trump last week on 34 felony charges against alleging the former president of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

At the heart of Bragg’s lawsuit against Jordan is a motion to stop enforcement of a congressional subpoena for Mark Pomerantz – a former lead investigator in the DA’s office on the Trump case.

Read more.

#alvin bragg #sdny #jim jordan

[republikkkanorcs]

[mariacallous]

BREAKING NEWS

The Manhattan D.A.’s office once considered charging Donald Trump with racketeering, a soon-to-be published book by a former prosecutor says.

Friday, February 3, 2023 2:52 PM ET

The prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump at that time.

[ausetkmt]

DA Bragg sues Jim Jordan claiming 'an unconstitutional attempt to undermine' the case : NPR

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg speaks at a press conference after the arraignment of former President Donald Trump in New York on April 4.

John Minchillo/AP

The New York prosecutor who is pursuing criminal charges against former President Trump says a Republican-led congressional committee is trying to interfere with his case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges "an unconstitutional attempt to undermine" his investigationand is suing Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, for what he says are Jordan's attempts to influence an active New York state prosecution.

Bragg says Jordan has launched a campaign to intimidate and attack him and that Jordan is demanding confidential documents that are highly sensitive and belong to local prosecutors. In the filing, he says it goes against Supreme Court precedent for Jordan, a member of Congress, to demand those documents.

Jordan and Bragg have been sparring for weeks

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, leads his panel's first meeting in the new Republican majority on Feb. 1.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

In recent weeks, before the the former president was indicted, Jordan and two other Republican House committee chairmen sent a letter to Bragg asking for documents and testimony related to the Trump investigation. The members called Bragg's investigation politically motivated and an abuse of power. Bragg's office responded with a letter defending its work, and said that Congress doesn't have oversight of state prosecutors. The letter said the information Jordan was asking for at the time was confidential and about a pending criminal investigation.

Then, Trump's unprecedented indictment came — Bragg's office charged a former president for the first time. Trump pleaded not guilty.

Two days after Trump's arraignment in New York,Jordan and the House committee subpoenaed a former attorney in Bragg's office, Mark Pomerantz, who wrote a book that was critical of Bragg's legal judgments.

What's in Bragg's lawsuit against Jordan?

Now with this lawsuit,Bragg is hitting back at the committee, suing to block Pomerantz from testifying. He said Congress has no power to investigate local prosecutors, and that the subpoena violates state sovereignty, and is politically motivated.

In the lawsuit against Jordan, Bragg says he wants the court to invalidate the subpoena issued to Pomerantz, and is also asking the court to prevent any future subpoenas on him or any of his current or former employees.

Jordan responded to the lawsuit in a tweet, saying Trump was indicted "for no crime" and that Bragg is trying to block congressional oversight.

While the lawsuit will move forward in a federal court in Manhattan, Jordan has already announced the committee's next step: the House Judiciary Committee will hold a "field hearing" Monday in New York, featuring people they're calling "victims" of Bragg's policies. The hearing will take place a short distance from both Bragg's office and the courthouse where Trump was arraigned.

A spokesperson for Bragg's office called the hearing a "political stunt."

#DA Alvin Bragg #DA Bragg sues Jim Jordan claiming 'an unconstitutional attempt to undermine' the case #trump case #jim jordan

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 11, 2023 (Tuesday)

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 12, 2023

The dramatic events in Nashville last week, when Republican legislators expelled state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black men, for speaking out of turn when they joined protesters calling for gun safety, highlighted a demographic problem facing the Republican Party. Members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up doing active shooter drills in their schools, and they want gun safety legislation. And yet, Republicans are so wedded to the gun industry and guns as part of party members’ identity that today, one day after five people died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky—including a close friend of Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear—the Indiana Senate Republicans passed a resolution honoring the National Rifle Association (NRA). Later this week, Republican leaders will speak at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis, where firearms, as well as backpacks, glass containers, signs, and umbrellas, are prohibited. Those speakers will include former president Trump and former vice president Mike Pence. The resolution and the speeches at the NRA convention seem an unfortunate juxtaposition to the recent mass shootings. Abortion rights are also a place where the Republican Party is out of step with the majority of Americans and especially with people of childbearing age. Last Tuesday, Janet Protasiewicz, who promised to protect reproductive rights, won the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 points in a state where elections are often decided by less than a point. Victor Shi of Voters of Tomorrow reported that the youth turnout of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, increased 240% since the last spring general election in 2019. Youth turnout at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, increased 232%. Almost 90% of those young people voted for Protasiewicz. And yet the party needs to grapple with last Friday’s ruling by Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, a drug used for more than 50% of medically induced abortions, and that it must be removed from the market. The party also must grapple with a new Idaho law that makes it illegal for minors to leave the state to get an abortion without the consent of their parents. In New York today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back against Republican overreach of a different sort when he filed a lawsuit in federal court against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his official role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee itself, and Mark Pomerantz, whom the committee recently subpoenaed, in response to a “brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.” The lawsuit accuses Jordan of engaging in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg” and to use congressional powers to intervene improperly in a state criminal prosecution. Like any defendant, the lawsuit says, Trump had every right to challenge his indictment in court. But rather than let that process play out, Jordan and the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee “are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction” that has led to multiple death threats against Bragg. Bragg’s office "has received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump's supporters,“ the complaint reads, “many of which are threatening and racially charged." “Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” the document says. “Congress has no authority to ‘conduct oversight’ into District Attorney Bragg’s exercise of his duties under New York Law in a single case involving a single defendant.” While Jordan and the Republicans defend Trump, there is a mounting crisis in the West, where two decades of drought have brought water levels in the region’s rivers to dangerously low levels. According to Benji Jones of Vox, who interviewed the former director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, John Fleck, last year about the crisis, the problem has deep roots. One hundred years ago, government officials significantly overestimated the water available in the Colorado River System when they divided it among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact provided a formula for dividing up the water in the 1450 miles of the Colorado River. It was designed to stop the states from fighting over the resource, although an Arizona challenge to the system was not resolved until the 1960s. On the basis of the water promised by the compact, the region filled with people—40 million—and with farms that grow much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. Now, after decades of drought exacerbated by the overuse permitted by the Colorado River Compact and by climate change, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to critical levels. Something must be done before the river water disappears not only from the U.S., but also from Mexico, which in 1944 was also guaranteed a cut of the water from the Colorado River. The seven states in the compact have been unable to reach an agreement about cutting water use. Today the Interior Department released an environmental review of the situation that offered three possible solutions. One is to continue to follow established water rights, which would prioritize the California farmland that produces food. This would largely shut off water to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Another option is to cut water distribution evenly across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The third option, doing nothing, risks destroying the water supply entirely, as well as cutting the hydropower produced by the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams. There is a 45-day period for public comment on the plans, and it appears that the threat of the federal government to impose a solution may light a fire under the states to come up with their own agreement, but it is unlikely they will worry much about Mexico’s share of the water. Historically, states have been unable to agree on how to divide a precious resource, and the federal government has had to step in to create a fair agreement. Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, the fallout from last week’s events continues. Judd Legum has reported in Popular Information that Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, doesn’t live in his district as state law requires. And Tennessee investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5 reports that state representative Paul Sherrell, “who recently suggested bringing back lynching as a form of capital punishment, has been removed from the House Criminal Justice Committee.”

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Tennessee #Letters From An American #Water wars #Tennessee Three #gerrymandering #election suppression #systemic racism #corrupt judges #gen z