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mark pomerantz
Trump Likely to Face Criminal Charges Over Stormy Daniels Hush Money: Report
One legal expert called the report "huge news" indicating that an indictment of the former president is "imminent."
Mar 09, 2023
Former U.S. President Donald Trump may soon face criminal charges in connection with the payment of hush money to the adult entertainer Stormy Daniels, The New York Times reported Thursday, citing four unnamed "people with knowledge of the matter."
According to the Times, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office extended an offer for Trump to testify next week before a grand jury considering the evidence in the prospective case against the twice-impeached ex-president, who is seeking the Republican nomination for 2024.
As Times reporters William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess, and Jonah E. Bromwich noted:
Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him.
In New York, potential defendants have the right to answer questions in the grand jury before they are indicted, but they rarely testify, and Mr. Trump is likely to decline the offer. His lawyers could also meet privately with the prosecutors in hopes of fending off criminal charges.
Any case would mark the first indictment of a former American president, and could upend the 2024 presidential race. It would also elevate Mr. Bragg to the national stage, though not without risk.
At issue is a $130,000 payment made to Daniels—an adult film star who claims she had an affair with Trump—by former fixer Michael Cohen during the last days of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump subsequently reimbursed Cohen for the payment. Cohen has not yet testified before the grand jury, but is expected to do so on an undetermined date.
"Trump has faced an array of criminal investigations and special counsel inquiries over the years but has never been charged with a crime, underscoring the gravity of Mr. Bragg's inquiry," the Times trio wrote.
The journalists further asserted that "Bragg could become the first prosecutor to charge Mr. Trump, but he might not be the last," noting that the Fulton County District Attorney's Office in Georgia is investigating whether the former president interfered in the 2020 election.
"And at the federal level, a special counsel is scrutinizing Mr. Trump's effort to overturn the election results, as well as his handling of classified documents," the reporters added.
Mark Pomerantz—one of two prosecutors involved with the Manhattan district attorney's investigation of the ex-president who resigned in protest last year—wrote in his new book, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, that "we developed evidence convincing us that Donald Trump had committed serious crimes" involving his finances and business practices.
"As we put the facts together, many of us came to believe that we had enough evidence to convict him, and we could present a solid case in court that would lead to a guilty verdict," Pomerantz related.
He continued:
I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the penal law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual statements of financial condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.
Asked in a recent CBS "60 Minutes" interview what he would advise Bragg in regard to Trump, Pomerantz replied: "This was a righteous case. You should bring it. It's important. And if you made the wrong decision, make a better decision."
Bragg retorted that "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."
Separately, a New York jury last December found two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization, Trump's company, guilty on all counts of criminal tax fraud. The former president's organization was subsequently ordered to pay a $1.6 million penalty for what a judge called "systemic, egregious fraud."
Also last December, the former congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the Trump's "Big Lie" unanimously voted to recommend federal criminal charges against the former president and some of his associates in connection with the insurrection. Given Trump's 2024 presidential run, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel.
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'His Empire Was Built on Lies': Ex-Prosecutor Urges Manhattan DA to Charge Trump
"This was a righteous case. You should bring it," Mark Pomerantz says to Alvin Bragg. "It's important. And if you made the wrong decision, make a better decision."
Feb 06, 2023
"We developed evidence convincing us that Donald Trump had committed serious crimes. As we put the facts together, many of us came to believe that we had enough evidence to convict him, and we could present a solid case in court that would lead to a guilty verdict."
That's what Mark Pomerantz—one of two prosecutors involved with the Manhattan district attorney's probe into the former president who resigned in protest last year—wrote in his new book, People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, set to be published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster.
The Hill, which obtained a copy of the 304-page book, reported Monday on what Pomerantz had to say about Alvin Bragg, Manhattan's current district attorney, succeeding Cy Vance Jr.
"The district attorney agreed and authorized the new prosecution," Pomerantz wrote of Vance. "But then the district attorney's office went through one of its very infrequent regime changes. The new regime decided that Donald Trump should not be prosecuted, and the investigation faltered."
According to The Hill:
Bragg in a statement said he didn't read the book, but he criticized it for jeopardizing the office's ongoing investigation. When reached for comment, his office also provided a copy of confidentiality rules in the employee handbook and a series of statements from prosecutor groups raising concerns.
"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 in a statement.
"Our skilled and professional legal team continues to follow the facts of this case wherever they may lead, without fear or favor. Mr. Pomerantz decided to quit a year ago and sign a book deal," he added.
The book is not the first time Pomerantz has made his argument that investigators had enough evidence to charge Trump, who is now seeking the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination. Last March, The New York Times reported on the ex-prosecutor's resignation letter to Bragg the previous month.
"I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the penal law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual statements of financial condition," Pomerantz wrote. "His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people."
Pomerantz—who spent a year poring over Trump's financial statements and accounting documents from 2011-20—also outlined the case against the former president Sunday in a "60 Minutes" interview CBS News' Bill Whitaker:
Mark Pomerantz: And what the investigation determined was that the financial statements that were submitted to banks for those years were overstated in each case by literally billions of dollars.
Bill Whitaker: Billions—
Mark Pomerantz: Billions of dollars.
Bill Whitaker: How was his business empire dependent on, or influenced by these false statements?
Mark Pomerantz: The financial statements that he prepared were given to the banks, and had to be given to the banks, in order to get the loans that he got. So he got hundreds of millions of dollars of bank financing in connection with many of his properties.
Bill Whitaker: it sounds like you're saying that his empire is built on lies.
Mark Pomerantz: His empire was built on lies. I am saying that.
[...]
Bill Whitaker: He paid off the loans. What's the crime?
Mark Pomerantz: The law is crystal clear that you don't have to prove that a loan wasn't repaid or that a bank lost money. It's still a crime to lie to a bank to get a loan.
Asked what his message to Bragg is now, Pomerantz said: "This was a righteous case. You should bring it. It's important. And if you made the wrong decision, make a better decision."
Similar to his statement to The Hill, Bragg told "60 Minutes" that he believed that further investigation was needed and his office's probe is ongoing.
Trump lashed out at Pomerantz and what he called the CBS "hit job" on his Truth Social platform, saying in part: "Crooked Hillary Clinton's lawyer, radically deranged Mark Pomerantz, led the fake investigation into me and my business at the Manhattan D.A.'s Office and quit because D.A. Bragg, rightfully, wanted to drop the 'weak' and 'fatally flawed' case. Now, Pomerantz got himself a book deal, and is obsessively spreading falsehoods about me. With all of this vicious disinformation being revealed by a 'prosecutor,' how can I ever be treated fairly in New York, or anywhere else? End the Witch Hunts!"
The former president faces a variety of legal issues related to his business, his handling of classified documents, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The "60 Minutes" interview and The Hill's reporting followed multiple reports about the forthcoming book—including The Daily Beastrevealing Friday that Pomerantz wrote, "To rebut the claim that Trump believed his own 'hype'... we would have to show, and stress, that Donald Trump was not legally insane."
"Was Donald Trump suffering from some sort of mental condition that made it impossible for him to distinguish between fact and fiction?" he added, noting that lawyers advising the district attorney's office "discussed whether Trump had been spewing bullshit for so many years about so many things that he could no longer process the difference between bullshit and reality."
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