OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan after the Ohio Republican’s committee sent the prosecutor a subpoena demanding information regarding the office’s indictment of former President Donald Trump last week.
In his suit, Bragg alleged that Jordan and the committee are attempting to wage an intimidation campaign over the indictment.
The D.A. said he’s taking legal action “in response to an unprecedently brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of” Trump, Fox News reported.
Fox News noted further:
Bragg, a Democrat, is asking a judge to invalidate subpoenas that Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has or plans to issue as part of an investigation of Bragg’s handling of the Trump case.
In recent weeks, the Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena seeking testimony from a former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who previously oversaw the Trump investigation. The committee has also sought documents and testimony about the case from Bragg and his office. Bragg has rejected those requests.
Earlier, reports said the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee plans to hold a field hearing on April 17 in New York City to look into how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies have impacted the area and led to an increase in violent crime.
The field hearing, which is titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan,” will be held at the “Jacob Javits Federal Building just blocks from Bragg’s Lower Manhattan office and the courthouse where Trump, 76, was arraigned on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records last week,” the New York Post reported.
“The House Judiciary Committee will hear from ‘victims’ of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s policies during a hearing in New York next week — escalating a confrontation with the progressive prosecutor over his unprecedented criminal case against former President Donald Trump, The Post has learned. Republicans have slammed Bragg as being soft on conventional crime while embracing a novel legal theory to bring the first-ever criminal case against an ex-president,” the Post reported.
“We’ll be hosting this hearing next week from NYC. We’ll be hearing from victims who are suffering under DA Bragg’s pro-crime policies. If Bragg can spend resources indicting President [Donald] Trump, he should be able to address the soaring crime in NYC,” committee member Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted.
We'll be hosting this hearing next week from NYC.
We'll be hearing from victims who are suffering under DA Bragg's pro-crime policies.
If Bragg can spend resources indicting President Trump, he should be able to address the soaring crime in NYC. https://t.co/S2IegwdPT1
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) April 10, 2023
A plethora of legal experts have come forward since Trump’s indictment and argued that Bragg’s case is exceptionally weak.
“The question to ask yourself in a case like this [is], ‘Would a case like this be brought against anybody else, whether he or she be president, former president or a regular citizen?’ The answer is… no,” Former Whitewater deputy counsel Sol Wisenberg said.
“You can debate all day long whether or not… Trump should be indicted related to the records at Mar-a-Lago, whether or not he should be indicted with respect to Jan. 6 incitement of lawless activity… Those are real crimes if they occurred, and he committed them,” he said. “This is preposterous.”
Ian Millhiser, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote: “There is something painfully anticlimactic about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Trump. It concerns not Trump’s efforts to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States, but his alleged effort to cover up a possible extramarital affair with a porn star. And there’s a very real risk that this indictment will end in an even bigger anticlimax. It is unclear that the felony statute that Trump is accused of violating actually applies to him.”
Mark Stern, a writer for the liberal outlet Slate, published a story titled, “The Trump Indictment Is Not the Slam-Dunk Case Democrats Wanted.”
John Bolton — who served as a national security adviser in the Trump administration and has since come out against Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign — appeared on CNN and blasted the charges filed against his ex-boss, former President Trump, saying the indictment was “even weaker than I feared it would be.”
“Speaking as someone who very strongly does not want Donald Trump to get the Republican presidential nomination, I’m extraordinarily distressed by this document,” Bolton said on CNN. “I think this is even weaker than I feared it would be.”
