The former leader of the Manhattan district attorney's investigation of Donald Trump rejected criticism that details spilled in his new tell-all book will harm any case brought against the former president.
“I think the criticism is unfounded,” Mark Pomerantz told Chuck Todd on NBC News' "Meet the Press," and predicted his book would be “meaningless” to any prosecution.
Pomerantz’s book, “People vs. Donald Trump,” describes his work investigating Trump’s alleged financial crimes as a special prosecutor in the Manhattan D.A.’s office. Pomerantz, a former federal prosecutor, was hired by former D.A. Cy Vance Jr. to helm the investigation of Trump’s finances. The team successfully indicted the Trump Organization for fraud, but Pomerantz quit a month into the tenure of new Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg when Bragg himself declined to green-light a case against Trump.
Todd noted that many former prosecutors, including Andrew Weissmann, a member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team and an MSNBC contributor, and former U.S. attorney Barbara McQuade, have said publicly that the revelations in Pomerantz’s book could hamper attempts to prosecute Trump, and be weaponized by Trump’s defense attorneys in a trial.
Challenges for mounting a jury trial “flow from the ocean of ink spilled about Donald Trump and his lies and what I believe are his crimes,” Pomerantz responded. “I don’t think my book will make the slightest difference if there’s a jury trial.”
Pomerantz said Trump’s defense attorneys would likely make objections about “everything under the sun" and predicted that the district attorney’s office will tell the court, "'There is nothing in this book that should prejudice this prosecution. So the book is meaningless, it doesn’t provide any kind of defense.’”
The Manhattan D.A.’s office now seems to be moving forward on a potential prosecution of Trump for the alleged hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Pomerantz noted that anything in his book about that case was already in the public domain “for literally years,” via the media, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s book and the federal case against Cohen for the payments.
“I am as sure as I can be that this is not going to compromise the prosecution,” said Pomerantz.
Pressed by Todd, Pomerantz also insisted that Vance had green-lit a prosecution of Trump before leaving office at the end of 2021. Asked why no charges had been filed, Pomerantz said the case was not ready: “We couldn’t get it done.”
Bragg, who took office in January 2022, has said he and other prosecutors reviewed the case and determined it was not ready.
