‘Trump guilty of numerous felony violations’
A prosecutor who had been leading a criminal investigation into Donald Trump before quitting last month said in his resignation letter that he believes the former United States president is “guilty of numerous felony violations,” and he disagreed with the Manhattan district attorney’s decision not to seek an indictment.
In the letter, published by The New York Times on Wednesday (Thursday in Manila), Mark Pomerantz told District Attorney Alvin Bragg there was “evidence sufficient to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” of allegations he falsified financial statements to secure loans and burnish his image as a wealthy businessman.
“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” Pomerantz wrote.
Pomerantz and his former coleader on the Trump probe, Carey Dunne, resigned on February 23 after clashing with Bragg over the future of the case.
Both were top deputies tasked with running the investigation on a day-to-day basis. Both started on the probe under former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., and Bragg asked them to stay when he took office in January. Both Vance and Bragg are Democrats.
In his resignation letter, Pomerantz wrote that Vance had directed his deputies to present evidence to a grand jury and seek an indictment of Trump and other defendants “as soon as reasonably possible.” No former president has ever been charged with a crime.
“I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest,” Pomerantz wrote.
Danielle Filson, a spokesman for Bragg, said in a statement on Wednesday night that the investigation into Trump was continuing and that a “team of experienced prosecutors is working every day to follow the facts and the law. There is nothing we can or should say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”
A message seeking comment was left with Trump’s lawyer.
Trump has called the investigation a politically motivated “witch hunt.”
The Manhattan district attorney’s office started investigating Trump in 2019 by first examining hush-money payments paid to women on his behalf and then expanding into an inquiry into whether the businessman-turnedpolitician’s company misled lenders or tax authorities about the value of its properties.
So far, the three-year investigation has resulted only in tax fraud charges against Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, and its longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg relating to lucrative fringe benefits such as rent, car payments and school tuition.