A new set of hard news has hit Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg following his unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.
Bragg had requested that a former prosecutor in his office be barred from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the criminal case against former President Trump. However, a federal judge swiftly denied his request on Wednesday, much to Bragg’s surprise and ultimately his frustration. It’s likely Bragg expected favor on the case among his colleagues who he likely assumed shared his disdain for Trump along with an unspoken understanding of abusing the legal system to frame the 45th president as a criminal.
“The committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), had subpoenaed ex-assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz to give testimony about the DA’s investigation into Trump, 76, that culminated in the former president’s indictment in March. Bragg filed suit against Jordan and the Judiciary Committee, claiming the subpoena was an overreach by the GOP-led House and an attempt to influence a state criminal proceeding,” the New York Post reported. “But Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil found the subpoena was issued with a valid legislative purpose and that it was not the federal judiciary’s role to dictate how Congress operates.”
“Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law,” Judge Vyskocil wrote in an opinion issued after a Manhattan federal court hearing.
Earlier this week, famed attorney Alan Dershowitz praised Trump for his legal maneuver against Bragg.
During a panel discussion on Fox News, Sean Hannity, Greg Jarrett, and Alan Dershowitz discussed the case Trump filed against his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for $500 million.
Trump’s lawsuit against Cohen was for alleged defamation of character and reported has nothing to do directly with the Manhattan District Attorney’s case, according to an individual who is familiar with Trump’s legal team. Michael Cohen is being sued by Trump for compensatory, incidental, actual, and punitive damages.
According to the lawsuit, “This is an action arising from [Cohen’s] multiple breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, conversion and breaches of contract by virtue of [Cohen’s] past service as [Trump’s] employee and attorney.”
A complex relationship has existed between Trump and Cohen for over a decade. Cohen handled many sensitive matters on Trump’s behalf as his personal lawyer and fixer. However, a raid by the FBI into Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room in early 2018 strained their relationship. As part of his plea agreement that followed the raid, Cohen admitted to a number of crimes, including campaign finance violations related to hush money payments he made to two women who claimed to have had an affair with Trump.
The information Cohen provided prosecutors through his cooperation with them, was a key component used by Bragg and his team to frivolously charge the former President on 34 criminal counts.
During the live panel discussion of the case, the participants praised Trump for suing Cohen, calling it a “legitimate move” and one that should have been done.
HANNITY: “All right, let me ask you this. First of all, let’s talk about the lawsuit Donald Trump has filed against Michael Cohen.”
DERSHOWITZ: “Good move. Good move. First of all, lawyers should not be violating lawyer-client privilege, number one. Number two, he gets a discovery, if he survives a motion to dismiss, and he is going to be able to find out things the government wouldn’t turn over to him in a criminal trial. So I think it’s a very smart move to go after Trump.”
HANNITY: “Are you assuming he has preserved all this information, and isn’t it likely that a lot of it doesn’t exist?”
DERSHOWITZ: “Well, you know, it’s very hard these days to hide things forever. With the internet, with social media, if you get the right people you can get things that people think they have hidden. So, I’m glad we are going to get to the bottom of this. Look, transparency is essential. If people have nothing to hide, they shouldn’t be worried.”
HANNITY: “Let’s bring in Gregg Jarrett. Gregg, your take on Trump’s suit against Michael Cohen?”
JARRETT: “Well, it’s a legitimate suit, it’s actionable in a court of law. It centers around the many lies of Michael Cohen. This is a guy who lied to the IRS, lied to U.S. banks, lied to Congress and went to prison for it. And Trump claims in his lawsuit he too is a victim, causing reputational damage. But on top of that, what jumped out at me in the lawsuit is that it claims that Cohen committed theft, an unjust enrichment by defrauding Trump over a phony business venture and pocketed an exorbitant amount of money over something that did not exist. On top of that, there’s also breach of fiduciary duty, which is pretty darn clear with Cohen, and breach of contract. You know, it’s bad enough that prosecutors called him a greedy liar and the judge who sentenced him said he committed a veritable smorgasbord of fraudulent crimes and deceit. Can you imagine a district attorney using a guy like that as his star witness? The problem with inveterate liars is you never know when you are getting scammed and it’s hard to tell the jury, ‘Believe this guy.’ He’s told so many lies, you would need a calculator to keep track of it.”
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Rephrased from: The Republic Brief By: Trump Knows
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