U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil has ruled that Rep. Jim Jordan's (R-OH) subpoena issued to a former prosecutor of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Braggs office, Mark Pomerantz, is enforceable.
The judge said the subpoena had a valid legislative purpose and that Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition as "no one is above the law." Jordan, who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been seeking to question Pomerantz over his highly publicized resignation from Braggs office in February 2022.
Pomerantz had criticized the office's decision to suspend an investigation against former President Donald Trump, a topic of interest for House Republicans broader probe into Braggs criminal case against Trump.
Despite Braggs counsel's appeal for emergency relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to prevent Pomerantzs testimony, Jordan appears poised to move forward with the deposition, which is scheduled for Thursday at 10:00 a.m.
A spokesman for Jordan celebrated the decision, stating that it "shows that Congress has the ability to conduct oversight and issue subpoenas to people like Mark Pomerantz.
Jordan's interest in Pomerantz is part of the Republican Party's wider investigation into Bragg's prosecution of Trump, which many have criticized as a politically motivated and unjust application of the law. Bragg has sued Jordan over the investigation in a 50-page complaint, asking the court to quash the subpoena and "put an end to this constitutionally destructive fishing expedition."
Vyskocil, who was appointed by Trump and confirmed in the Senate 913, observed that the subpoena was not an "overbroad fishing expedition" and that Bragg's claim that permitting Pomerantz to appear will undermine the pending criminal case against Trump and violate grand jury secrecy laws was "without merit."
Pomerantzs book, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, also worked against him in the case. In his own filing, Pomerantz argued that there was no further substance he could provide on the Trump case than what was already laid out in the book, and that congressional inquiry would put him in a legally untenable position.
However, Vyskocil wrote that neither Pomerantz nor Bragg were entitled to unilaterally narrow the universe of acceptable inquiry to the information and mental impressions that Pomerantz decided to sell in the pages of his book.
The case, Bragg v. Jordan, No. 23-cv-3032, is ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
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