(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) A former Manhattan District Attorney staffer exercised his Fifth Amendment rights while being questioned by House Judiciary Committee members in a May of 2023 hearing about the potentially illegal investigation of former President Donald Trump, Newsweek reported Thursday.
Ex-prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who at the time was special assistant to the Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, refused to answer whether or not used illegal methods to investigate Trump in the case of his 34-count felony lawfare indictment in connection with an alleged hush-money scheme.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who was part of the subcommittee’s investigation into the weaponization of the government against the former president, posted footage of the session to his Twitter account:
NEW VIDEO:
Trump Prosecutor PLEADS FIFTH when asked if he BROKE THE LAW investigating Trump! pic.twitter.com/enDGztIhtD
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) May 2, 2024
“Did you knowingly break any laws when investigating President Trump?” Gaetz asked Pomerantz.
“On the advice of counsel, I’m not going to answer that question, sir,” Pomerantz replied, invoking his “privilege against self-incrimination.”
Later, asked the same question, Pomerantz offered the “same response.”
Gaetz later told Newsweek that he asked Pomerantz a “very simple question regarding whether he committed crimes or violated the civil rights of any people in the course of his investigation of President Trump and his tenure at the Manhattan DA’s office,” which he of course refused to answer.
The footage was released on the heels of the Judiciary Subcommittee’s report on the “Anatomy of a Political Prosecution,” a description of Bragg’s office and its politicized mistreatment of Trump.
The subcommittee concluded in the report that Bragg “weaponized the criminal justice system” by “scouring every aspect of President Trump’s personal life and business affairs, going back decades, in the hopes of finding some legal basis—however far-fetched, novel, or convoluted—to bring charges against him.”
When said theories were disproven, they suggested, the DA simply “pivoted to a new theory,” searching for any crimes that might serve as the basis for their prosecutorial efforts.
