Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was apprehensive about indicting former President Donald Trump because he feared he would lose the case, a former prosecutor on Bragg’s team claims.
Evidence that Trump or his business committed crimes was very complicated, but prosecutors have reason to believe Trump misled banks to procure loans, Mark Pomerantz, who resigned from the district attorney’s office in February, explained on The Cutting Edge podcast.
MANHATTAN DA REPORTS TRUMP INQUIRY IS ALIVE AND SIFTING THROUGH NEW EVIDENCE
”He and the new team were focused on the risk that we could lose the case,” Pomerantz said, per the Daily Beast. “The devil was really in the details, and the details couldn’t be explained in kind of short form … ultimately, the DA — the incoming DA — and the team were not comfortable going forward.”
Pomerantz resigned from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office alongside Carey Dunne in protest of Bragg expressing doubts about pursuing a criminal case against Trump. In his resignation letter, Pomerantz contended Trump was “guilty of numerous felony violations.” Bragg took the reins from his predecessor Cyrus Vance as Manhattan district attorney at the start of the year.
“I believe that Donald Trump, in fact, was guilty and, second, that there was sufficient evidence as a matter of law to have sustained a guilty verdict if we went forward,” Pomerantz explained, the outlet reported. “I was utterly convinced that if the defendant had not been Donald Trump or the putative defendant, if it had been Joe Blow from Kokomo, we would have indicted without a big debate.”
Vance began the investigation in 2019 and had waged an intense court battle to get his hands on Trump’s tax returns. Ultimately, Pomerantz said he and his team became convinced they had the evidence to indict Trump but knew it would be tricky to prove in court because Trump’s actions did not always neatly fit into the parameters of particular crimes.
“The view of the investigative team was that Trump had committed crimes, and I don’t think there were dissents from that view. The problem was fitting his conduct within the pigeonholes of the New York penal law. It was very easy to do that under federal law, but, of course, we weren’t sitting as federal prosecutors,” Pomerantz contended, per the outlet.
After years of combing through financial documents, prosecutors surmised that the Trump Organization had committed fraud, Pomerantz explained. Trump managed to secure loans that “would not have been made, except for the fact that Donald Trump gave the banks personal financial statements and attested to their accuracy,” Pomerantz said, per the outlet.
Bragg responded to public foreboding that he canned the inquiry, countering in April that the investigation remains ongoing. Still, the grand jury in the case has reportedly expired, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has maintained he will no longer testify in the inquiry as a result of Bragg’s hesitancy in the case.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to Bragg’s office for comment.
Trump is also facing a civil inquiry from the New York Attorney General’s Office into his business practices, to which the Manhattan district attorney has reportedly provided assistance. Another inquiry in Fulton County is also examining whether crimes were committed during the aftermath of the 2020 election by his allies. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and panned the inquiries as being political witch hunts.
