Ex- DA likens Trump to a mob boss
Donald Trump grew his business, fortune and fame “through a pattern of criminal activity,” according to a new book by a veteran prosecutor, who reveals that the Manhattan district attorney’s office once considered charging the former president with racketeering, a law often used against the Mafia.
The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned in protest early last year after the newly elected district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to seek an indictment of Trump at that time. By then, the inquiry was more narrowly focused on whether the former president had fraudulently inflated the value of his assets to secure loans.
But for months beforehand, Pomerantz had mapped out a wide- ranging possible case against the former president under the state racketeering law, according to the soon- to- be published book, “People vs. Donald Trump.” That broader approach was based on the theory that Trump had presided over a corrupt business empire for years, a previously unreported aspect of the longrunning inquiry.
Pomerantz and his colleagues cast a wide net, examining a host of Trump enterprises — including Trump University, his forprofit real estate education venture, and his family charitable foundation.
“He demanded absolute loyalty and would go after anyone who crossed him. He seemed always to stay one step ahead of the law,” Pomerantz, a prominent litigator who has prosecuted and defended organized crime cases, writes of Trump. “In my career as a lawyer, I had encountered only one other person who touched all of these bases: John Gotti, the head of the Gambino organized crime family.”
A lawyer for Trump r e c e n t l y sent Pomerantz a letter threatening that “if you publish such a book and continue making defamatory statements against my clients, my office will aggressively pursue all legal remedies.” The lawyer, Joe Tacopina, said Friday that “injecting the name John Gotti into this seems like just another desperate attempt by Pomerantz to sell books.”
The book, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is a chronicle of the complicated and circuitous investigation, which produced charges against Trump’s longtime chief financial officer and his family business but has yet to yield formal accusations against the former president himself.
Pomerantz’s book arrives as the investigation is ramping up once again, with prosecutors impaneling a new grand jury to hear evidence about Trump’s role in paying hush money to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential campaign. Bragg’s administration, which has raised ethical and legal concerns about Pomerantz’s revealing details of the inquiry, is also applying additional pressure on the former chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, seeking to secure his cooperation against the former president.
The developments represent a significant escalation of the investigation and suggest that Bragg is again nearing a decision about whether to charge Trump.
A year ago, in the early weeks of his tenure, Bragg balked at indicting Trump for a case centered on the potentially fraudulent inflation of his assets. Although Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., concluded that he had enough evidence to make that case, Bragg was concerned that there was insufficient proof that Trump intended to break the law, a necessary element of the case.
His decision to pull back just as the investigation was reaching a crescendo prompted the resignation of Pomerantz — and another senior prosecutor overseeing the investigation, Carey R. Dunne — and the final chapters of the book detail that mounting tension with Bragg.
Pomerantz blames Bragg for being too slow to get up to speed on the case after he was elected in November 2021. Bragg, he writes, also failed to forge a personal relationship with Pomerantz and Dunne. And the district attorney was distracted with other public relations headaches as he faced a fusillade of opposition to his unveiling of new policies aimed at limiting incarceration for certain defendants.
In a statement in response to questions about the book, Bragg defended his decision.
“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,” he said. Pomerantz’s book offers new details about the evidence he and other prosecutors had assembled, including information provided by a bank employee who had approved financing for Trump’s company.
Still, there was substantial disagreement in the district attorney’s office about the strength of the case, which Pomerantz acknowledges, and several prosecutors stepped away from it, rather than continue down the path that Pomerantz was pursuing. And some pundits have questioned whether the case could be successful in showing that Trump had knowledge of any fraud.
In the book, Pomerantz argues that the investigation “turned into the legal equivalent of a plane crash,” adding that the cause of this crash was “pilot error.” But despite disagreeing with Bragg’s decision, he disputed accusations from some Trump critics who theorized that Bragg was corrupt, writing that “suggestions that Alvin acted in bad faith were ridiculous.”
Asked to respond to Pomerantz’s “pilot error” line, Bragg said in his statement, “Mr. Pomerantz’s plane wasn’t ready for takeoff.”
The book has deepened the wound between the two prosecutors. Bragg’s office recently sent a letter to Pomerantz and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, saying that the author had been obligated to obtain permission from the office before publicizing certain information about the investigation and that he had not done so.
“This office believes there is a meaningful risk that the publication will materially prejudice ongoing criminal investigations,” the letter said, adding that were Pomerantz to reveal grand jury material, he could be charged with a felony because such information is by law secret, and that profiting from his work as a public servant in New York City might also be illegal.
In response, Simon & Schuster said that it stood behind the book, and Pomerantz writes in the book that he did not “prejudice any investigation or prosecution of Donald Trump” or reveal grand jury information. The book’s narrative covers Pomerantz’s yearlong detachment to the district attorney’s office, where Vance lured him out of retirement to work exclusively on the Trump investigation. Pomerantz offered to work for free.
When he came on board, Pomerantz inherited what he saw as a foundering investigation.