A statement on behalf of Donald Trump has attacked a former prosecutor who accused the former president of “numerous” felonies as a “Radical Left lawyer” engaged in “partisan witch hunts” to “gin up crimes” against his “great business.”
The slam was fired off Thursday, a day after The New York Times printed a resignation letter from attorney Mark Pomerantz in which he wrote last month that he was quitting an investigation into Trump’s business activities in the Manhattan district attorney’s office because of a lack of action against the former president.
Pomerantz wrote that he was convinced Trump had committed “numerous felony violations” linked to “false” financial statements to banks, yet he complained that District Attorney Alvin Bragg had refused to file charges. The D.A.’s office has been looking into the Trump Organization’s business practices to determine if Trump falsely inflated the values of his assets to obtain favorable bank loans.
“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” wrote Pomerantz, who was working as a special district attorney in the investigation. Not taking action against Trump, Pomerantz noted in the letter, was a “grave failure of justice.”
The statement attacking Pomerantz was posted under Trump’s name but signed by his paid aide Liz Harrington. She posted it on Twitter, which has banned Trump from its platform.
In true Trump style, the statement had a particularly glaring error, mistakenly claiming that prosecutors were so upset by the investigation into his activities in the D.A.’s office that they resigned.
In fact, just the the opposite was true. Pomerantz and another senior prosecutor, Carey Dunne, quit because action isn’t being taken against him. They were planning to charge Trump with falsifying business records, according to the Times.
The statement on Twitter implied that Pomerantz was somehow colluding with Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. (Trump on Thursday sued Clinton and other Democrats, alleging a conspiracy to link his 2016 presidential campaign to Russia.)
Pomerantz, 70, was a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and worked later in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Last year the Times reported that he came out of retirement from private practice with the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison to get involved in the investigation into Trump’s suspicious business activities for the Manhattan D.A.’s office.
Bragg has said the investigation is ongoing but has yet to respond specifically to Pomerantz’s criticism.
Pomerantz could not immediately be reached for comment about the Trump attack statement on Twitter.
Law officials and lawyers have spoken out on Pomerantz’s behalf and have sharply criticized Bragg.
George Conway, husband of former Trump White House aide Kellyanne Conway, tweeted: “If Mark Pomerantz says this, you can take it to the bank.”
In another tweet, Conway quoted Pomerantz’s observation that not prosecuting Trump would be a “grave failure of injustice” and added: “Indeed.”