Two prosecutors lead Manhattan District Attorney’s investigation into tax fraud Donald Trump and his family business abruptly resigned, it said on Wednesday.
Lawyers Kerry R. Dunn and Mark F. Pomerantz withdrew from the case after Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, expressed doubts about the continuation of the case against Trump. New York Times reported.
The investigation, which goes hand in hand with an investigation into tax fraud in the Trump Organization by New York Attorney General Leticia James, is investigating whether the former president’s family business misrepresented the value of its assets and allowed certain executives to suspend taxes by compensating them. advantages of books.
Sources close to the investigation said it had stopped for a month in the middle of the presentation of evidence by prosecutors to the grand jury.
It is also reported that Bragg’s team did not question any witnesses for more than a month after postponing the plan to burn at least one person without the green light from the prosecutor’s office.
The two top prosecutors are stepping down, raising serious questions about the future of what Trump called a “witch hunt.” Former Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich said that meant the investigation was “dead”. He also shifted the focus to James’s ongoing civil case after a judge ruled last week that Trump and his children, Jr. and Ivanka, should testify.
Attorneys Mark F. Pomerantz (left) and Kerry Dunn (right) abruptly withdrew from the Southern District of New York investigation
The sudden shake threatens to thwart the investigation launched by former District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in 2018.
Meanwhile, a grand jury convened to help investigate Trump’s real estate empire expires in April.
The investigation sparked late last year when then-prosecutor Vance convened a grand jury. Witnesses reportedly included a Mazars USA accountant who knew about Trump’s financial revelations and a former CEO of Deutche Bank, one of the former president’s biggest creditors, before severing ties with him.
It is not clear why Bragg is moving away from him now.
In December, shortly before taking office, he promised to focus on the high-profile investigation.
“This is obviously a follow-up case that deserves the prosecutor’s personal attention,” Bragg told CNN at the time.
New York’s Southern District is investigating Trump (pictured during a fundraiser in Congress in Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday) and his company for possible tax fraud
Shortly before taking office, new district attorney Alvin Brag promised CNN “in person” to focus on the high-level investigation.
Earlier, Trump called on New York prosecutors to focus instead on the growing rate of violent crime in the Big Apple, amid a national criminal wave that has engulfed the country’s major cities.
Pomerantz, who once headed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, joined the investigation last February.
He entered private practice after heading the SDNY’s appeals department, defending clients in dozens of organized crime cases at a time when prosecutors were drastically escalating efforts to put mafia bosses behind bars. On the public side, he also played a key role in the prosecution of Gambino’s criminal family boss John Gotti.
His departure and Dunn virtually ended the case, said former SDNY prosecutor and Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich.
“The two chief investigators / prosecutors are resigning = the Manhattan prosecutor’s criminal case is dead,” Bromwich wrote on Twitter.
Alan Weisselberg is accused of tax evasion and $ 1.7 million in tax evasion while the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigates whether Donald Trump’s real estate empire misrepresented the value of its assets and compensated executives with lavish unregistered gifts. have remained untaxed.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal mediator, whom Pomerantz interviewed during the Trump Organization’s investigation shortly after boarding, accused New York prosecutors of failing to do so after hearing about lawyers leaving.
“I am deeply concerned about this report. “I know that the information that the NYDA has, and not making accusations, is a breach of duty to all New Yorkers and the country,” Cohen said.
The case has so far led to criminal charges against both the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO, Alan Weisselberg.
Weisselberg’s lawyers briefed the court on Tuesday to dismiss his allegations of tax fraud, arguing that the executive was simply “concomitant” in the long-running prosecution of New York prosecutors against Weisselberg’s longtime boss. Donald J. Trump.
Both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty.
The longtime chief financial officer has been charged with tax evasion and $ 1.7 million in tax evasion, a charge his legal team wants dropped. They also claim that the accusation of non-payment of local taxes on a luxury apartment in New York falls outside the statute of limitations of three years or more.
The former president has not been charged or charged with wrongdoing in either Bragg’s or James’ investigations.
However, he faced a huge legal setback earlier this month when a judge ruled that he and two of his older children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, should participate in the Attorney General’s civil investigation.
James’ office is investigating whether the company is misleading creditors, investors and tax authorities about the value of Trump’s property.
In another blow, the top accounting firm Mazars USA, which has long processed the former president’s corporate and private tax returns, severed ties with the Trump Organization in early February.
Trump lashes out at James and Bragg investigations after his longtime accounting firm Mazars severed ties with his company and distanced itself from 10 years of financial data
Court documents show that the company has washed its hands of its decades-old financial statements of Trump, claiming that they can no longer be considered reliable.
Trump turned to James and Bragg on Sunday, accusing them of “scaring” Mazars to cut him off.
“My long-standing accounting firm did not leave me for any reason other than being harassed, abused and intimidated by DA and AG, which for years threatened them with accusation and ruin,” he told Save America PAC.
“They were ‘broken’ by these racist prosecutors on the radical left and could not stand it any longer.”
Mazars accountant Donald Bender, who has been in charge of processing the Trump Organization’s financial information for years, appeared before a grand jury convened by a former Manhattan prosecutor last year.
Trump himself has not been accused of any wrongdoing or condemned both investigations as “witch hunts”