Judge OKs subpoena from House GOP to former Trump prosecutor

NEW YORK — A federal judge declined Wednesday to block a subpoena from the House Judiciary Committee to a former prosecutor who investigated Donald Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, paving the way for a Thursday deposition of the former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz.

“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,’” wrote U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.

“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,” she continued. “Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law.”

The district attorney’s office planned to ask an appeals court to intervene quickly and stop the deposition, a spokesperson for the office said.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and the Judiciary panel, which he chairs. Bragg sought a court order preventing the House from enforcing the subpoena, arguing that the House had no legitimate legislative purpose in issuing the subpoena and that it intends to examine the district attorney’s internal deliberations regarding the criminal case it brought against Trump last month.

But Vyskocil, who was appointed by Trump, found that Jordan and the committee “have identified several valid legislative purposes underlying the subpoena,” including the committee’s interest in investigating federal forfeiture funds used in connection with the investigation of Trump, as well as possible legislative reforms to “insulate current and former presidents from state prosecutions.”

The Judiciary committee also has contended that its purpose in issuing the subpoena is to study the potential effects that the threat of a future prosecution could have on a president while he is in office.

And though Bragg argued that the true purpose of Jordan’s inquiry was to “undermine and obstruct” the case against Trump, the judge said the motivations of the committee were “irrelevant.”

At a hearing in Manhattan federal court earlier Wednesday, the judge challenged lawyers for both sides aggressively and focused extensively, as she did in her written ruling, on a book Pomerantz wrote about his experience investigating Trump at the district attorney’s office.

At the hearing, Vyskocil questioned whether Pomerantz had already disclosed privileged information in his writings and in related television interviews, at one point holding up a copy of the book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” which had been heavily bookmarked with colorful flags.

And she questioned whether the district attorney’s office had taken steps to prevent or address Pomerantz’s disclosures. Leslie Dubeck, Bragg’s general counsel, said that after publication, the office had alerted the New York City Department of Investigation to potential misdemeanor violations by Pomerantz in disclosing certain information.

“Does it preserve your confidences?” the judge asked Dubeck of Pomerantz’s book. After a pause, Dubeck replied, “no.”

In her written decision, Vyskocil found that the district attorney’s office had taken no action either before or after the publication of Pomerantz’s book to protect privileged information. “This repeated inaction constitutes acquiescence to the disclosure of any otherwise privileged information,” she wrote.

Though Pomerantz has argued that if he is deposed he will be caught between either violating privilege rules or potentially being held in contempt of court, Vyskocil offered no sympathy.

“Pomerantz is in this situation,” she wrote, “because he decided to inject himself into the public debate by authoring a book that he has described as ‘appropriate and in the public interest.’”