Appeals Court Temporarily Blocks House Subpoena!

By Elena Gilbert On Apr 22, 2023

On Thursday, a federal appeals court temporarily delayed a House Judiciary Committee subpoena for testimony from a former Manhattan prosecutor involved in a criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump.

Just hours earlier, a federal court had ordered the former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, to take a deposition with the committee. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York issued the order.

Trump, a Republican and the current front-runner for the presidency is the subject of an unprecedented criminal investigation by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on allegations of fabricating corporate documents.

Trump has entered a not-guilty plea to the allegations related to hush money payments made to two women who claim to have had encounters with Trump before the 2016 election.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, chair of the Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee, announced the initiation of a probe into Bragg’s case, stating it was looking into whether politics drove the prosecution.

The committee subpoenaed Pomerantz, who had left the district attorney’s office a short time after Bragg assumed leadership in January 2022. Under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., Pomerantz had been working on the office’s investigations against Trump.

In a letter of resignation, Pomerantz stated that there was “no doubt” that Trump had committed crimes and questioned Bragg’s ostensible choice to halt the investigations at the time.

Bragg filed a lawsuit against the Judiciary Committee in response to Pomerantz’s subpoena in an effort to prevent the former prosecutor from testifying. The congressional panel lacked the authority to “supervise state criminal prosecutions,” according to Bragg’s legal lawsuit.

Bragg attempted to have the subpoena for Pomerantz invalidated on Wednesday, but Trump nominee U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil rejected his request.

“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,'” Vyskocil said in federal court in Manhattan.

“Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law,” the judge wrote. After a hearing on Monday, she issued a decision that was disrespectful to Bragg’s lawsuit.

“The first 35 pages of the Complaint have little to do with the subpoena at issue and are nothing short of a public relations tirade against former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump,” she wrote.

Jordan had contended that because the D.A.’s office receives some federal funding, his committee had jurisdiction over Bragg’s work.

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Pomerantz also requested that Vyskocil quash the subpoena, claiming in a filing that it places him in an “impossible position.”

″If I refuse to provide information to the Committee, I risk being held in contempt of Congress and referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal prosecution.

If, on the other hand, I defy the District Attorney’s instructions and answer questions, I face possible legal or ethical consequences, including criminal prosecution,” Pomerantz wrote. Both Pomerantz and Bragg appealed Vyskocil’s decision.

The appeals court approved their request for a brief stay on Thursday morning so that a three-judge panel could decide whether to keep the subpoena from being served while the appeal is pending. According to the circuit court, Jordan’s committee has until Friday at 3 p.m. ET to respond.

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