The Manhattan district attorney on Tuesday sued Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio in an extraordinary step intended to keep congressional Republicans from interfering in the office’s criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump.
The 50-page suit, filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, accuses Mr. Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg. Mr. Bragg last week unveiled 34 felony charges against Mr. Trump that stem from the former president’s attempts to cover up a potential sex scandal during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.
Lawyers for Mr. Bragg are seeking to bar Mr. Jordan and his congressional allies from enforcing a subpoena sent to Mark F. Pomerantz, who was once a leader of the district attorney’s Trump investigation and who later wrote a book about that experience. Mr. Pomerantz resigned early last year after Mr. Bragg, just weeks into his first term in office, decided not to seek an indictment of Trump at that time.
Mr. Bragg’s lawyers, including Theodore J. Boutrous Jr. of the law firm Gibson Dunn and Leslie Dubeck, the general counsel in the district attorney’s office, also intend to prevent any other such subpoenas, the lawsuit says. Mr. Jordan has left open the possibility of subpoenaing Mr. Bragg.
Mr. Pomerantz is also named as a defendant in the suit, though that appears to be a formality. By naming him, Mr. Bragg’s lawyers are seeking to block Mr. Pomerantz from testifying if he were legally compelled to do so. Mr. Pomerantz has shown no indication that he is willing to testify voluntarily. He declined to comment on Tuesday.
Last month, Mr. Jordan, in his role as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, sent a letter with two Republican colleagues that demanded the district attorney’s office provide communications, documents and testimony about Mr. Bragg’s investigation of Mr. Trump. And after Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors last week unveiled the charges against Mr. Trump, Mr. Jordan issued the subpoena to Mr. Pomerantz seeking to compel a closed-door deposition.
In his book, published earlier this year, Mr. Pomerantz described his view of Mr. Trump’s actions as plainly criminal, as well as his frustrations with Mr. Bragg when he took office in 2022 and did not charge Mr. Trump. That decision led Mr. Pomerantz and another of the investigation’s leaders, Carey Dunne, to resign.
Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne were primarily focused on whether Mr. Trump had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets, but Mr. Bragg was not confident in their case. After they left, he and his aides began focusing on a hush-money payment made to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 campaign.
Mr. Bragg continued the investigation and impaneled a grand jury to hear evidence about Mr. Trump in January. The jurors voted to indict Mr. Trump late last month.
Mr. Bragg’s office has accused House Republicans of illegally meddling in a criminal investigation and prosecution without a legitimate purpose. Republicans have fired back that they have oversight powers in relation to Mr. Bragg’s unprecedented step of indicting a former president — one who is also a current candidate for political office.
Last month, Mr. Trump announced on his social media website, Truth Social, that he was going to be arrested three days later. The claim was false — no indictment had been voted on at the time — but it set in motion extensive defenses of Mr. Trump by allies in the Republican-led Congress, who vowed to investigate the district attorney.
Mr. Jordan’s committee announced on Monday that it plans to hold a “field hearing” in New York City on April 17, apparently intending to suggest that Mr. Bragg is focused on the prosecution of Mr. Trump rather than Manhattan’s crime rate.
On Monday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office characterized the hearing as a “political stunt” and pointed toward Police Department data that shows murders, shootings and burglaries are down in Manhattan this year.
