Resigning New York prosecutors speak out about Trump investigation

Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, two top prosecutors on the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation of Trump, resigned abruptly last month, amid reports that the investigation into the former president’s finances was foundering.

The newly elected district attorney, Alvin Bragg, was reportedly more skeptical than his predecessor that the evidence his office’s attorneys had gathered against Trump would be enough to convict him.

In a February resignation letter obtained by the New York Times, Pomerantz wrote that the team of lawyers investigating Trump had “no doubt” he had “committed crimes” and that Bragg’s decision not to move ahead with prosecuting Trump “will doom any future prospects that Mr Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating”.

[...]

The clock is ticking on the case against Trump, as the current term of the grand jury which has been hearing evidence expires in April.

  Guardian

There'll be a loud and angry chorus at Bragg's door.

While the resignation letter conceded that the case against Trump could be challenging and that there were “risks” of bringing it to court, it argued that there was a strong public interest in prosecuting Trump “even if a conviction is not certain”.

The former Manhattan district attorney Cy Vance, who had been deeply involved in the case, had “directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible”, Pomerantz reportedly wrote, but Bragg, who was sworn in this January, reviewed the case and did not agree.

Pomerantz believed Bragg’s decision not to seek an indictment of Trump was “made in good faith” but also “misguided and completely contrary to the public interest”.

[...]

“The investigation continues,” Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for the district attorney, wrote in an email. “A team of experienced prosecutors is working every day to follow the facts and the law. There is nothing we can or should say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”

The Associated Press requested copies of Pomerantz and Dunne's resignation letters under New York's open records law, but the district attorney's office rejected the request Feb. 25.

In its rejection, the office said: "The criminal matter both individuals were assigned remains pending; as such, the public release of the letters which reflect internal deliberations and opinions about an on-going investigation will likely interfere with that investigation."

[...]

Pomerantz, a former mafia prosecutor, was brought out of private practice by Vance to add his expertise in white collar investigations to the Trump probe. Dunne argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a successful, multiyear fight for Trump's tax records.

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So far, the three-year investigation has resulted only in tax fraud charges against Trump's company, the Trump Organization, and its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg relating to lucrative fringe benefits such as rent, car payments and school tuition.

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In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Trump should be prosecuted "without any further delay," noting that much of the evidence related to before Trump was president, that the investigation had already been prolonged by the tax return battle and other fights.

Waiting to see if more damning evidence could be found would likely be unfruitful, he wrote, and would only "raise additional questions about the failure to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his criminal conduct."

"No case is perfect. Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice," Pomerantz wrote.

  NPR

He's right about that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04/05/2023:  Sorry, Alvin.  I take it all back.  I now understand the reasons Bragg didn't push this out.