Ex-prosecutor says Donald Trump is ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’ : NPR

Legal professional Mark Pomerantz is shown leaving court docket in New York on Sept. 8, 2004.

Mary Altaffer/AP

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Mary Altaffer/AP

Lawyer Mark Pomerantz is proven leaving court in New York on Sept. 8, 2004.

Mary Altaffer/AP

NEW YORK — A prosecutor who had been leading a felony investigation into Donald Trump just before quitting past thirty day period stated in his resignation letter that he thinks the previous president is “responsible of several felony violations” and he disagreed with the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to seek out an indictment.

In the letter, printed Wednesday by The New York Moments, Mark Pomerantz advised District Attorney Alvin Bragg there was “evidence enough to set up Mr. Trump’s guilt past a realistic question” of allegations he falsified economical statements to protected loans and burnish his image as a rich businessman.

“The staff that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether or not he fully commited crimes — he did,” Pomerantz wrote.

Pomerantz and his former co-leader on the Trump probe, Carey Dunne, resigned on Feb. 23 soon after clashing with Bragg above the long run of the circumstance.

Both were being top deputies tasked with jogging the investigation on a working day-to-day basis. Both begun on the probe below former District Lawyer Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg questioned them to remain when he took workplace in January. Each Vance and Bragg are Democrats.

In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Vance had directed his deputies to existing proof to a grand jury and find an indictment of Trump and other defendants “as soon as reasonably feasible.” No former president has at any time been billed with a crime.

“I think that your determination not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the current record, is misguided and absolutely contrary to the general public interest,” Pomerantz wrote.

Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for Bragg, mentioned in a assertion Wednesday night that the investigation into Trump is continuing and that a “staff of expert prosecutors is operating every single day to comply with the facts and the law. There is absolutely nothing we can or must say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”

A message looking for remark was left with Trump’s law firm.

Trump has termed the investigation a politically enthusiastic “witch hunt.”

The Linked Press requested copies of Pomerantz and Dunne’s resignation letters underneath New York’s open up records regulation, but the district attorney’s workplace rejected the request Feb. 25.

In its rejection, the business office claimed: “The criminal issue both equally folks have been assigned stays pending as this sort of, the public launch of the letters which mirror inner deliberations and thoughts about an on-going investigation will possible interfere with that investigation.”

The Manhattan district attorney’s office environment started investigating Trump in 2019, initially analyzing hush-funds payments compensated to gals on his behalf and then growing into an inquiry into regardless of whether the president’s organization misled creditors or tax authorities about the worth of its houses.

So considerably, the three-calendar year investigation has resulted only in tax fraud expenses versus Trump’s firm, the Trump Business, and its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg relating to rewarding fringe gains these kinds of as rent, vehicle payments and college tuition.

Pomerantz, a previous mafia prosecutor, was introduced out of private observe by Vance to add his skills in white collar investigations to the Trump probe. Dunne argued in advance of the U.S. Supreme Court docket in a effective, multiyear combat for Trump’s tax data.

Right after getting office in January, Bragg explained he was happy of the continuity that Dunne and Pomerantz experienced brought in jogging the significant-profile investigation as he took more than the D.A.’s office environment from Vance, who retired after a dozen years in place of work.

Also in January, New York Attorney Common Letitia James claimed in court docket filings in a parallel civil investigation that her business had uncovered proof the Trump Firm utilised “fraudulent or deceptive” valuations of property to get financial loans and tax gains.

Trump has supplied his Statement of Monetary Problem — a yearly snapshot of his holdings — to banking companies to secure hundreds of thousands and thousands of dollars worthy of of loans on homes these as a Wall Avenue office environment building and a Florida golfing system, and to monetary journals to justify his spot amid the world’s billionaires.

His lawyers have argued that the statements were precise, and that any tries to spin disagreements about the worth of actual estate into a crime ended up politically determined.

Some legal authorities had reported that Manhattan prosecutors confronted a possible hurdle in proving that Trump or his enterprise deliberately falsified economical statements.

In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Trump should be prosecuted “with out any further more hold off,” noting that considerably of the evidence connected to just before Trump was president, that the investigation experienced by now been extended by the tax return fight and other fights.

Waiting around to see if much more damning proof could be uncovered would most likely be unfruitful, he wrote, and would only “raise further questions about the failure to maintain Mr. Trump accountable for his felony perform.”

“No situation is best. No matter what the dangers of bringing the circumstance might be, I am persuaded that a failure to prosecute will pose significantly larger risks in terms of community self-confidence in the honest administration of justice,” Pomerantz wrote.