Source: The Washington Post / Getty
In what’s regarded as an extraordinary move, Alvin Bragg has filed a lawsuit against Jim Jordan to prevent interference in New York’s indictment case against Donald Trump.
On Tuesday (April 11th), the Manhattan District Attorney sued the Republican congressman & House Judiciary Chairman from Ohio in the Southern District of New York. The 50-page lawsuit alleges that Jordan is engaged in a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” Bragg due to the prosecution of the former president. Trump was arraigned in court last Tuesday and pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The suit is also asking the court to block a former senior prosecutor with the district attorney’s office, Mark Pomerantz, from testifying as well as “confidential documents and testimony from the district attorney himself as well as his current and former employees and officials.” Jordan issued a response to the lawsuit on Twitter, writing: “First, they indict a president for no crime. Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.”
“Rather than allowing the criminal process to proceed in the ordinary course, Chairman Jordan and the committee are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction,” the suit from Bragg reads, referring to the more than 1,000 calls and emails the office has received from Trump supporters since he declared his own arrest last month on his TruthSocial account. Much of the correspondence has been “threatening and racially charged”.
The litigation comes after Jordan, an ardent Trump supporter, announced that he has organized a committee of representatives from the House which will hold a “field hearing” in New York City on April 17th. The committee claims that Bragg’s prosecution of Trump “is politically motivated”, alleging that Bragg’s office used $5,000 in federal funds which gives them the right to investigate. US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil denied the emergency subpoena of the suit regarding Pomerantz later on Tuesday and set a hearing for the matter on April 19th. That was the date that the House committee had set for Pomerantz’s deposition. The former attorney left Bragg’s office last year over differences in handling the case against Trump. He has informed Jordan and the committee that he is not willing to voluntarily cooperate with their investigation per instructions from Bragg and his office.
