NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office went on the offensive Friday, bracing for a new book by a former prosecutor who claims Bragg allowed his office’s criminal probe into Donald Trump to crash and burn.
Bragg has already tried to halt the publication of Mark Pomerantz’s “People vs. Donald Trump,” which hits shelves on Tuesday.
In the book, Pomerantz claims Bragg bungled the Trump investigation he inherited by waiting too long to acquaint himself with the prosecutors leading the probe, himself and Carey Dunne.
Pomerantz and Dunne quit last February, after Bragg disagreed with his predecessor, Cy Vance, Jr., and didn’t think that the team had enough evidence to prove Trump acted with criminal intent when his company manipulated asset values.
The long-running Trump probe turned into the “legal equivalent of a plane crash” based on “pilot error,” Pomerantz wrote, The New York Times reported.
Pomerantz is planning a media blitz before the book’s release, with a spot on "60 Minutes" on Sunday and "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Monday.
Pomerantz’s book includes excerpts of a withering email he wrote Bragg as the men’s relationship soured, The New York Times reported.
“Neither Carey nor I are rash, immature, starry-eyed young lawyers,” Pomerantz wrote. “You need to respect our judgment, our decades of experience as prosecutors and defense lawyers, and the work that we have put into the case.”
Bragg hit back Friday to say he wasn’t the only one who felt the fledgling case didn’t have teeth in early 2022.
“After closely reviewing all the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz’s investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case, and also those I brought on: more work was needed. Put another way, Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff,” Bragg said.
“I haven’t read the book, and won’t comment on any ongoing investigation because of the harm it could cause to the case. But I do hope there is at least one section where Mr. Pomerantz recognizes his former colleagues for how much they have achieved on the Trump matter over the last year since his departure.”
A source close to the DA, who took umbrage with Pomerantz’s communications with Bragg, pointed out that Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor, has never tried a state case or any case since the late 1990s.
Bragg’s office went into overdrive when news of the book broke. They wrote the publisher Simon & Schuster asking to halt the release until his attorneys could scrutinize it for confidential information that could affect the ongoing probe. The office claims Pomerantz violated a nondisclosure agreement he signed on Dec. 13, 2020.
Trump’s new celebrity lawyer, Joe Tacopina, echoed that request in a follow-up letter to the publisher, threatening to sue Pomerantz and Simon & Shuster when the book comes out.
The DA’s comprehensive investigation into Trump and his business dealings, which has been going on for three years, is still active.
This week, the office revived the inquiry by impaneling a new special grand jury, who a source said is hearing evidence about the hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The panel is expected to hear evidence for six months.
When prosecutors couldn’t convince the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg to flip on Trump, it charged him and two company entities with criminal tax fraud. Weisselberg copped to the charges in August and is serving a five-month sentence on Rikers. The companies were fined $1.6 million, the maximum under the law.
The book’s release was met with criticism from two prosecutor organizations.
The District Attorneys Association of the State of New York, of which Vance was the former president, said it had “strong concerns” about the publication.
“By writing and releasing a book in the midst of an ongoing case, the author is upending the norms and ethics of prosecutorial conduct,” the group said in a statement Friday. “Simply put, a fair and just criminal justice system depends on those who are sworn to uphold the law and abide by ethical conduct. By releasing his book, Mr. Pomerantz has failed to live up to that duty, and is potentially compromising an ongoing criminal investigation.”
The Association of Prosecuting Attorneys on Friday said in a letter to Bragg’s office that Pomerantz’s book could potentially land him in hot water. The D.C.-based group of elected and appointed prosecutors nationwide, said it’s a felony to disclose materials derived from a grand jury without a written court order.
Pomerantz disclosed details about evidence in the case related to a banker who oversaw financing for the Trump Organization, according to The Times. Toward the end of the book, he explains that nothing in its stemmed from confidential testimony.
Pomerantz, who took down John Gotti at the pinnacle of his career as a prosecutor, likened Trump to the infamous mobster.
“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Pomerantz wrote, the Times reported.
“In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”
Trump has denied all accusations and has not been criminally charged.
