Trump Is Guilty of ‘Numerous’ Felonies, Prosecutor Who Resigned Says

1 of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump considered that the former president was “guilty of a lot of felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to keep him accountable, according to a copy of his resignation letter.

The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted his resignation very last month soon after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, abruptly stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Pomerantz, 70, a well known former federal prosecutor and white-collar protection law firm who came out of retirement to get the job done on the Trump investigation, resigned on the identical working day as Carey R. Dunne, another senior prosecutor primary the inquiry.

Mr. Pomerantz’s Feb. 23 letter, acquired by The New York Periods, offers a personal account of his selection to resign and for the 1st time states explicitly his perception that the business office could have convicted the previous president. Mr. Bragg’s final decision was “contrary to the community fascination,” he wrote.

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

Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business enterprise data, especially his once-a-year fiscal statements — a felony in New York Point out.

Mr. Bragg’s determination not to go after expenses then — and the resignations that adopted — threw the fate of the extensive-jogging investigation into really serious doubt. If the prosecutors experienced secured an indictment of Mr. Trump, it would have been the maximum-profile case at any time introduced by the Manhattan district attorney’s business and would have created Mr. Trump the initial American president to facial area prison rates.

Before this month, The Times described that the investigation unraveled soon after months of escalating disagreement concerning the veteran prosecutors overseeing the situation and the new district attorney. Considerably of the discussion centered on whether the prosecutors could establish that Mr. Trump knowingly falsified the worth of his belongings on yearly money statements, The Occasions uncovered, a required component to proving the case.

Even though Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz ended up self-confident that the office environment could display that the previous president had meant to inflate the worth of his golf clubs, resorts and office environment properties, Mr. Bragg was not. He balked at pursuing an indictment versus Mr. Trump, a selection that shut down Mr. Pomerantz’s and Mr. Dunne’s presentation of evidence to a grand jury and prompted their resignations.

Mr. Bragg has stated that his office environment carries on to perform the investigation. For that rationale, Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor and deputy New York Point out lawyer common who became district lawyer in January, is barred from commenting on its details.

Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had made a decision in his closing times in business to transfer toward an indictment, leaving Mr. Trump just weeks absent from probably prison rates. Mr. Bragg’s determination appears to be, for now at least, to have taken off a person of the best authorized threats Mr. Trump has at any time confronted.

The resignation letter solid a harsh mild on that conclusion from the point of view of Mr. Pomerantz, who wrote that he believed there was plenty of evidence to confirm Mr. Trump’s guilt “beyond a fair doubt.”

“No case is perfect,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote. “Whatever the threats of bringing the situation might be, I am confident that a failure to prosecute will pose a great deal greater pitfalls in conditions of public self-assurance in the truthful administration of justice.”

In a assertion responding to the letter, Mr. Trump’s law firm, Ronald P. Fischetti, said that rates ended up not warranted and that Mr. Pomerantz “had the option to current the fruits of his investigation to the D.A. and his senior staff members on numerous situations and failed.”

Mr. Fischetti, who was Mr. Pomerantz’s law associate in the 1980s and early 1990s, additional: “We really should applaud District Attorney Alvin Bragg for adhering to the rule of law and sticking to the evidence when building an apolitical charging determination dependent only on the lack of proof and very little else.”

In its possess statement, Mr. Trump’s firm, the Trump Firm, called Mr. Pomerantz “a under no circumstances-Trumper” and said: “Never in advance of have we noticed this amount of corruption in our authorized process.”

Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and leveled own assaults on the people investigating him, such as a thinly veiled reference to Mr. Pomerantz. In one assertion, he claimed that lawyers from Mr. Pomerantz’s former legislation agency had “gone to work in the district attorney’s place of work in buy to viciously make confident that ‘the job will get accomplished.’ ”

Mr. Pomerantz, who verified his resignation in a temporary job interview past thirty day period, declined to comment on the letter when contacted by The Occasions this week.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg, Danielle Filson, mentioned that the investigation was continuing and included: “A crew of experienced prosecutors is working every day to stick to the points and the law. There is nothing at all much more we can or ought to say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”

In his letter, Mr. Pomerantz acknowledged that Mr. Bragg “devoted considerable time and electricity to understanding the evidence” in the inquiry and had built his decision in great faith. But, he wrote, “a decision manufactured in good religion may possibly however be erroneous.”

Mr. Pomerantz contrasted Mr. Bragg’s solution with that of Mr. Vance, who built the Trump investigation a centerpiece of his tenure and convened the grand jury last tumble. Mr. Pomerantz’s letter stated that soon in advance of leaving business, Mr. Vance had directed the prosecutors to go after an indictment of Mr. Trump as properly as “other defendants as soon as moderately feasible.”

The letter did not title the other defendants, but the current Periods write-up noted that the prosecutors envisioned also charging Mr. Trump’s relatives business enterprise and his longtime main economic officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, who had previously been indicted alongside with the company final calendar year, accused of a yearslong scheme to evade taxes.

Mr. Bragg has advised aides that the inquiry could shift ahead if a new piece of proof is unearthed, or if a Trump Group insider decides to switch on Mr. Trump. Some investigators in the business office saw either probability as extremely not likely.

“There are usually additional specifics to be pursued,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote in his letter. “But the investigative workforce that has been functioning on this subject for quite a few months does not believe that that it tends to make legislation enforcement feeling to postpone a prosecution in the hope that more evidence will somehow arise.”

He extra that “I and other people imagine that your determination not to authorize prosecution now will doom any upcoming prospective customers that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the legal carry out we have been investigating.”

As of late December, the staff investigating Mr. Trump was typically united around Mr. Vance’s final decision to pursue rates — but that experienced not normally been the circumstance, The Occasions described this month. Past calendar year, three profession prosecutors in the district attorney’s workplace opted to go away the crew, awkward with the velocity at which it was continuing and with what they believed ended up gaps in the proof.

In the beginning, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne experienced envisioned charging Mr. Trump with the crime of “scheme to defraud,” believing that he falsely inflated his belongings on the statements of economical situation that had been made use of to obtain lender loans. But by the finish of the 12 months, they had adjusted class and prepared to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying organization documents — a more simple case that basically amounted to painting Mr. Trump as a liar fairly than a thief.

Mr. Pomerantz, who joined the investigation much more than a calendar year in the past, claimed in the letter that Mr. Trump’s economic statements ended up “false” — that he experienced lied about his assets to “banks, the nationwide media, counterparties, and numerous other individuals, which includes the American people today.”

Mr. Pomerantz is not the only just one included in the investigation to advise that Mr. Trump or his corporation broke the law. The New York attorney normal, Letitia James, whose workplace is helping the felony investigation and conducting its own civil inquiry, has submitted court docket papers in the civil issue arguing that she has evidence displaying that the Trump Group had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” procedures.

Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, the two of whom are Black Democrats, of carrying out a politically enthusiastic “witch hunt” and remaining “racists.”

Ms. James’s inquiry, which can direct to a lawsuit but not legal prices, carries on as she seeks to problem Mr. Trump and two of his adult small children less than oath. The Trumps a short while ago appealed a judge’s purchase that they submit to Ms. James’s questioning.

In one more court filing, Ms. James disclosed that Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting company, Mazars Usa, had slice ties with him and fundamentally retracted a decade’s well worth of his economic statements.

Mazars was shaping up to be a crucial witness in the criminal investigation as properly. In January, Mr. Pomerantz questioned Mr. Trump’s accountant at Mazars ahead of the grand jury, zeroing in on exaggerations in the fiscal statements.

But the statements also contained disclaimers, such as acknowledgments that Mazars experienced neither audited nor authenticated Mr. Trump’s statements, probably complicating the circumstance. And some of Mr. Bragg’s supporters have argued that it would have been a complicated circumstance to win.

Even now, Mr. Pomerantz wrote that he and other prosecutors believed that they had amassed enough proof to build the previous president’s guilt, crafting that, “We believe that the prosecution would prevail if rates were being brought and the issue ended up experimented with to an neutral jury.”

Addressing an evident perception in Mr. Bragg’s business that they could reduce at trial, Mr. Pomerantz wrote, “Respect for the rule of regulation, and the have to have to boost the bedrock proposition that ‘no person is over the legislation,’ involve that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not specific.”

Mr. Pomerantz is a former head of the prison division in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, as perfectly as a longtime defense lawyer. He worked on the Trump investigation pro bono.

Mr. Dunne at the time was serving as Mr. Vance’s standard counsel, a occupation he experienced held considering that early 2017. In that part, he had properly argued prior to the Supreme Court docket, profitable accessibility to Mr. Trump’s tax information.

Mr. Dunne has declined to comment.