New York Prosecutors Leading Trump Business Probe Resign
NEW YORK — Two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump’s business practices suddenly tendered their resignations on Wednesday.
While the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has been examining Trump and his business dealings since 2018, New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg expressed his doubts about moving on with the case and pressing charges prior to the resignations, The New York Times first reported. The prosecutors, Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, resigned following a month long pause on presenting evidence to the grand jury.
The prosecutors have not questioned any witnesses for over a month since postponing plans to question at least one witness before the grand jury. Dunne and Pomerantz did not elaborate on their exact reasons for resigning, although their absence potentially throws the future of the criminal probe against Trump into question.
The investigation sought to determine whether Trump and his business associates artificially inflated the value of his assets to gain beneficial loan term agreements from banks. Trump has maintained the civil investigation into his business practices is purely a political attempt to malign his character.
Bragg’s predecessor as New York’s district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., convened the grand jury last fall and questioned Trump’s longtime accountant and a real estate industry expert before the pause in activity, according to The Times’ reporting. Vance did not seek reelection after his term as district attorney expired, paving the way for Bragg to take over the investigation.
Since leaving office, Trump has dealt with numerous inquiries into his businesses and personal affairs. The initial investigation in 2018 sought to determine the Trump Organization’s role in paying hush money to a pornographic actress who said she was paid to keep quiet about the affair she had with the former president, which itself was brought forth from a federal case in which one of Trump’s former lawyers pleaded guilty to arranging the payments at Trump’s direction.
In July 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, with running a 15-year tax evasion scheme. Lawyers for both Weisselberg and the Trump Organization requested those charges to be dropped on Tuesday, citing political motivations against them.
New York Attorney General Letitia James joined the criminal fraud investigation last May while conducting a parallel civil inquiry that Trump has filed a lawsuit to halt, as previously reported in The Well News. James is seeking to question Trump under oath before the grand jury in that case.
Prosecutors in the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office are also examining the financial dealings of the Trump National Golf Club to determine whether the Trump Organization misled local officials about the true value of the property to reduce its taxes. Meanwhile, the Fulton County district attorney is conducting another criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia by Trump and his allies. This investigation stems from the former president’s January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he was urged to overturn the state’s election result.
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