U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil slammed down an order made by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) in his widely believed political case against former President Donald Trump.
Judge Vyskocil ruled that Mark Pomerantz, who was previously involved in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation of Trump, must face a House Judiciary Committee subpoena.
The judge wrote a 25 page order that rejected Bragg’s request to block House Republicans from questioning Pomerantz, who resigned from Bragg’s office last year.
“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,’” ruled Vyskocil, a Trump appointee. “It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection. Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law.”
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has sought to investigate Bragg’s criminal prosecution of Trump. He subpoenaed Pomerantz and asked other employees to turn over personal emails about his hiring process in recent days.
“Today’s decision shows that Congress has the ability to conduct oversight and issue subpoenas to people like Mark Pomeran[t]z, and we look forward to his deposition before the Judiciary Committee,” Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Jordan, said in a statement.
Bragg last week filed a lawsuit against Jordan to block Pomerantz’s subpoena and Jordan’s other attempts at getting information from prosecutors. Bragg said the investigation was a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” his office’s work.
“In our federalist system, elected state and federal actors sometimes engage in political dogfights …The Court does not endorse either side’s agenda. The sole question before the Court at this time is whether Bragg has a legal basis to quash a congressional subpoena that was issued with a valid legislative purpose. He does not,” Vyskocil wrote.
Series of benchslaps in this order by federal judge denying Alvin Bragg TRO seeking to enjoin the House subpoena to a member of his team who bragged in a book about his pro bono efforts to prosecute Trump. Court demolishes Bragg’s & Pomerantz’s arguments: https://t.co/HvS4EZXK69
— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@pnjaban) April 20, 2023
