An official under Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg responded to a letter from a House Republican panel, signaling the district attorney is open to testifying in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction late last month.
In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.), Bragg general counsel Leslie Dubeck said the district attorney currently has “scheduling conflicts” but might testify in front of the committee in the future under certain conditions.
“This Office is committed to voluntary cooperation,” Ms. Dubeck wrote in a letter, dated June 7. “That cooperation includes making the District Attorney available to provide testimony on behalf of the Office at an agreed-upon date, and evaluating the propriety of allowing an Assistant District Attorney to testify publicly about an active prosecution to which he is assigned.”
“However,” she added, “the proposed date that the Subcommittee selected without consulting the Office presents various scheduling conflicts.” The letter did not elaborate.
The Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee’s previous letter also did not make clear the “scope of the proposed testimony” from Mr. Bragg, an elected Democrat, Ms. Dubeck said. Proceedings related to the Trump case are continuing until at least July 11, when the former president’s sentencing date is scheduled, the letter said.
“And to participate in a public hearing at this time would be potentially detrimental to those efforts. The District Attorney’s Office therefore requests an opportunity to engage with Committee staff to identify a new hearing date, and to better understand the scope and purpose of the proposed hearing,” Ms. Dubeck wrote.
“As with the prior inquiries from this Committee, we look forward to discussing with committee staff how the Office may be able to accommodate the Committee’s invitation while also protecting the integrity of an ongoing criminal prosecution and New York’s sovereign interests.”
Almost immediately after a Manhattan jury convicted former President Trump on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Mr. Jordan’s office sent a letter to the Manhattan district attorney, requesting that he sit for an interview. The presumptive nominee for the Republican Party had pleaded not guilty to the charges, calling them a form of election interference in the lead-up to the November 2024 presidential election.
In the Manhattan case, Mr. Bragg’s office accused the 45th president of falsifying the repayment of his former lawyer Michael Cohen to allegedly cover up a payment to Stephanie Clifford, an adult film performer better know by her stage name Stormy Daniels, who had claimed she had an affair with the former president in 2006. He denied the affair ever occurred.
Meanwhile, Mr. Jordan has publicly suggested withholding federal funding from any entity that attempts to prosecute a former president, describing such efforts as the “weaponization of the federal government.” Both the district attorney’s office and White House officials have said there have been no coordinated efforts on behalf of the Biden administration to prosecute former President Trump in the New York case.
The GOP-led House committee successfully battled before to get a deposition from one former prosecutor who worked on the Trump case, Mark Pomerantz, over Mr. Bragg’s initial objections. That deposition, however, yielded little, with Mr. Pomerantz declining to answer many questions on the grounds that doing so could potentially open him up to a criminal prosecution for disclosing secret grand jury testimony.
Aside from Mr. Jordan’s office, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter last year that called for Mr. Bragg’s testimony and also criticized his investigation into the former president.
Outside of Manhattan, former President Trump was charged in Washington, Florida, and Fulton County, Georgia, relating to a range of alleged crimes. The former president has pleaded not guilty to those counts, too.
Republicans have also sent a number of letters to Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she indicted President Trump and more than a dozen others for allegedly trying to illegally overturn the 2020 election results. They have questioned her use of federal funding her investigation.
That case, however, was put on pause by the Georgia Court of Appeals until March 2025, coming as the former president and several co-defendants challenged a Fulton County judge’s ruling earlier this year that allowed Ms. Willis to remain on the case.
The former president’s Washington case, brought by special counsel Jack Smith, also was paused by a federal judge after he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to rule on the matter later in June. In Florida, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has not set a trial date in the case accusing him for illegally retaining classified document after he left the White House in early 2021.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times