Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg responded to several leading House Republicans’ requests for information on the probe into former President Donald Trump, saying Trump “created a false expectation” that his arrest was imminent.
Bragg’s general counsel sent a five-page letter to GOP House committee chairmen Jim Jordan of Ohio, Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and James Comer of Kentucky regarding their request for documents and testimony in the Trump investigation.
The district attorney’s office said the investigation “is one of thousands conducted” by the office in its history and that Bragg “stands by his pledge” to release the conclusion of the investigation publicly.
“Your letter dated March 20, 2023 (the ‘Letter’), in contrast, is an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” Bragg’s office wrote.
“The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene,” the letter accused. “Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”
Bragg’s office also called the lawmakers’ requests “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty” as well as argued that “federal funding is an insufficient basis to justify these unconstitutional requests.”
“The Letter indicates that its requests may be related to a review of federal public safety funds,” Bragg’s office wrote. “But the Letter does not suggest any way in which either the District Attorney’s testimony about his prosecutorial decisions or the documents and communications of former Assistant District Attorneys on a pending criminal investigation would shed light on that review.”
“Nonetheless, to assist Congress in understanding the ways in which the DA’s Office has used federal funds, we are preparing and will submit a letter describing its use of federal funds,” the office continued.
Bragg’s letter comes as Jordan sent letters Wednesday to two former Manhattan DA office attorneys seeking information that could support a claim Bragg’s prosecution of Trump is politically motivated.
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