(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) One of the attorneys leading the prosecution case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan over the alleged falsification of business records related to hush payments is stepping down.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Peter Pope, a key member of the leadership team within the office of the embattled Soros-backed Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, is set to retire at the end of the month, a legal publication reported on Wednesday.
Pope was credited as an integral part of the prosecution team against Trump in an April 4 press release from the Manhattan DA’s office. The Wall Street Journal also flagged Pope as one of the veteran attorneys prosecuting Trump.
Bragg’s attorneys, the press release claimed, were “handling the prosecution of this case with the assistance of Peter Pope (Executive Assistant D.A.), Steven Wu (Executive Assistant D.A. and Chief of the Appeals Division), and Alan Gadlin (Deputy Chief of the Appeals Division).”
In 2007, Pope got caught in a scandal that entangled then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, a Democrat, along with his staff. A criminal investigation revealed that Spitzer’s office, in which Pope served, had improperly used state troopers for political purposes, the New York Times reported at the time.
The New York Post reported on August 13, 2007, that Pope joined efforts to block staffers from cooperating in the investigation of the Governor’s Office led by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. His potential efforts to obstruct justice forced him to hire Susan Necheles – now one of Trump’s attorneys — to represent him in the decade-old scandal, the WSJ reported last month.
Pope started his career as a prosecutor at the Manhattan Da’s Office, where he focused on violent crime and other racketeering crimes, according to information publicly available.
In January 2022, Bragg tapped Pope to be Executive Assistant DA for Gun Violence Prevention, a newly created position by the leftist DA during his month in office.
“Declaring combating gun violence his top priority, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg today announced the appointment of Peter Pope as the Manhattan District Attorney’s office first ever Executive Assistant District Attorney for Gun Violence Prevention,” Bragg announced on January 26, 2022. “Mr. Pope is an accomplished attorney with expertise in gun violence prevention and a proven record of taking on tough challenges and getting results.”
Bragg made gun control, among prosecuting Trump and overhauling crime prosecutions in Manhattan, a top priority of his leftist campaign for DA in 2021.
