NEW YORK—A Manhattan judge ruled Wednesday that the House Judiciary Committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), can subpoena a former prosecutor who worked for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, a Trump appointee, ordered that the lower chamber’s Judiciary Committee has the authority to become involved in the investigation of former President Donald Trump.
Specifically, Vyskocil granted—over Bragg’s objection—that Jordan could subpoena Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in Bragg’s office, for his testimony related to his investigation of Trump.
The judge’s Wednesday order means that Pomerantz must testify before the House Judiciary Committee on April 20. Pomerantz could be subject to criminal liabilities by testifying in Congress, one of Bragg’s attorneys said during the hearing on Wednesday. Pomerantz could also be held in contempt of Congress if he does not cooperate with requests of Congress’s requests, his lawyers said in a Monday filing, which puts the former prosecutor in a catch-22 situation.
The Wednesday order came after an hour-long verbal argument between Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., counsel for Bragg, and House General Counsel Matthew Berry in the Southern District Court of New York. It gave the Judiciary Committee’s lawmakers an early victory in their legal clash with Bragg, which began when Bragg sued the committee, as well as Pomerantz, to stop the congressional body from enforcing the subpoena on Pomerantz.
In her Wednesday order, Vyskoci ruled in favor of congressional lawmakers, affirming their stance that the subpoena they issued on Pomerantz serves legitimate legislative purposes and is thus protected from lawsuits by the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Speech and Debate Clause protects federal legislators from lawsuits for actions that serve a valid legislative purpose.
“Today’s decision shows that Congress has the ability to conduct oversight and issue subpoenas to people like Mark Pomerantz, and we look forward to his deposition before the Judiciary Committee,” Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Jordan, told The Epoch Times in a statement following the ruling on Wednesday.
Jordan’s probe into Bragg’s prosecution of Trump began two days after Trump announced on March 18 that he would be arrested. Jordan asked Bragg to provide documents about his “politically motivated prosecution” of a former president.
Then came Trump’s indictment on April 4. The former president was charged with 34 counts of felony falsifying business records. On April 6, Jordan subpoenaed Pomerantz to seek his testimony.
Pomerantz had pushed for an indictment against Trump in 2021 after leading a probe into the former president’s finances. He left the Manhattan district attorney’s office in February 2022 because Bragg initially decided not to pursue a criminal case against Trump. Pomerantz later released a memoir about the case.
In response to Jordan’s subpoena to Pomerantz, Bragg filed a federal lawsuit on April 11 seeking to nullify Jordan’s subpoena, which included an emergency request for a temporary restraining order on Jordan and an injunction to block the subpoena’s enforcement. The court ordered a hearing on this emergency request, leading to the Wednesday hearing and the subsequent rejection by the court of Bragg’s request.
During the hearing, the House attorney asserted that the committee’s subpoena to Jordan serves a valid legislative purpose and is therefore protected from any interference from the courts under the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Berry proposed two reasons for this claim.
First, the attorney stated that Congress had introduced legislation that Pomerantz’s testimony could help inform. He cited a bill that, if enacted into law, would bar the use of federal funds to investigate a sitting or former president (the Accountability for Lawless Violence In our Neighborhoods, or ALVIN, Act), as well as another that would allow Congress to remove of an action or prosecution against a former president (H. R. 2553).
The House attorney also argued that Congress is within its authority to examine whether “politically motivated” prosecutions of a former would interfere with the duties of a sitting president. For example, it may inappropriately influence a sitting president’s decision-making on policies, for the president may “fear” the posthoc prosecution by a local DA for a decision that may be unpopular to the people in the DA’s locality, Berry said.
Bragg’s attorney objected to these contentions. The committee’s subpoena, Boutrous said, exceeded congressional authority because it is the judicial branch’s job–not that of Congress–to ensure that this ongoing prosecution is not “politically motivated.”
He said that the committee, in issuing the subpoena, intended to “disrupt” Bragg’s criminal case against Trump and that this action “encroaches” upon other branches of government–the New York Executive Department and the judicial branch.
Bragg’s attorney cited the Supreme Court case Trump v. Mazar, where the high court ruled in Trump’s favor and stated that the congressional committees could not subpoena Trump’s financial statements. The Supreme Court reasoned in that ruling that conducting a criminal investigation is a power of the executive branch and that Congress’s subpoena against Trump violates the principles of separation of powers. Boutrous says the Supreme Court ruling applies to this case because this case also raises significant separation of powers questions.
In her Wednesday ruling, Vyskocil affirmed Congress’s position that the subpoena serves a valid legislative purpose.
Furthermore, she rejected Brag’s reasoning that Trump v. Mazar applies to the case.
“The congressional subpoena in Mazars was directed at materials pertaining to the sitting President of the United States,” Vyskocil wrote in her ruling.
“The congressional subpoena in Mazars was directed at materials pertaining to the sitting President of the United States. In contrast, here, the subpoena was issued to a private citizen who is no longer employed by any state government and who has written a book and spoken extensively about the subject matter of the congressional inquiry,” she wrote.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.