(Headline USA) The Manhattan district attorney investigating Donald Trump rebuffed House Republicans’ request Thursday for documents and testimony about the case, dismissing it as an “unprecedented inquiry” with no legitimate basis.
In a letter obtained by the Associated Press, the general counsel for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg slammed the congressional request as “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”
“The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene,” Leslie Dubeck wrote in the letter. “Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”
The Republican chairmen of three House committees on Monday sent a letter to Bragg seeking information about his actions in the Trump case. The Republicans criticized the grand jury investigation as an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.”
The chairmen requested testimony as well as documents and copies of any communications with the Justice Department to be turned over by Thursday. The request came as Republicans in the House quickly rallied around the former president as a grand jury in New York weighs whether to bring an indictment against him.
“If a grand jury brings charges against Donald Trump, the DA’s Office will have an obligation, as in every case, to provide a significant amount of discovery from its files to the defendant so that he may prepare a defense,” Dubeck wrote.
The five-page response from Bragg’s office provides a rare insight into what has remained a secret grand jury process, marking one of the first public acknowledgments that there is a sitting grand jury currently investigating Trump.
The DA’s office has adhered closely to centuries-old rules that have kept grand juries under wraps to protect the reputations of people who end up not being charged and to encourage reluctant witnesses to testify.
In proceedings closed to the public and members of the media, grand jurors listen to evidence presented by prosecutors and hear from witnesses. There is no judge present nor anyone representing the accused, and prosecutors do not have to offer any evidence favorable to the defense.
The disclosure comes as the grand jury appears close to finishing its work, after hearing last week from Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, but the timing of a possible decision on whether to charge the ex-president remains uncertain.
However, questions arose after the grand jury canceled all its sessions for the remainder of the week following what some reported as damning testimony on Monday or Tuesday that assailed Cohen’s credibility.
New evidence presented to the jury may, in fact, have included an exculpatory letter that Cohen wrote in 2018 accepting full responsibility for the hush-money payoffs to Trump extortionists Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had affairs with the business mogul and ex-‘Apprentice’ host 10 years prior to his successful run for president.
Further complicating matters is the level of protest anticipated if Trump, the leading GOP contender for 2024, is publicly arraigned, giving the appearance of partisan impropriety.
Law enforcement officers in New York—many of whom already resent Bragg for his failure to enforce crime in the city—have been making preparations for any unrest, should Trump face charges.
On Thursday, one of the GOP chairmen, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, expanded his probe into the handling of the Trump case by demanding testimony and documents from Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, two former Manhattan prosecutors who had been leading the Trump case before quitting last year in a clash over the direction of the probe.
“Last year, you resigned from the office over Bragg’s initial reluctance to move forward with charges, shaming Bragg in your resignation letter—which was subsequently leaked—into bringing charges,” Jordan, an Ohio Republican, wrote in the letter to Pomerantz late Wednesday. “It now appears that your efforts to shame Bragg have worked as he is reportedly resurrecting a so-called ‘zombie’ case against President Trump using a tenuous and untested legal theory.”
Requests for comment from Pomerantz and Dunne were not returned.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
