Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Must Prove Trump Is Not Legally Insane

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As they prepare to potentially indict Donald Trump for relentlessly lying to banks about his wealth, Manhattan prosecutors have been forced to consider whether the former US president is a criminal mastermind or simply deranged, according to in a new tell-all memoir by a member. of that group.

In his book about how that investigation collapsed, former special assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz explains the kind of obstacles his team had to overcome to build a historic criminal case against the Teflon Don.

To refute the claim that Trump believes his own hype we need to show, and emphasize, that Donald Trump is not legally insane, Pomerantz wrote.

Does Donald Trump suffer from some kind of mental condition that has made it impossible for him to distinguish between fact and fiction? he asked, noting that a group of high-powered lawyers advising the DA’s office discussed whether Trump had been spouting nonsense for years about so many things that he could no longer process the difference between nonsense and truth.

The Daily Beast on Friday received an advance copy of People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, which hits store shelves next Tuesday.

The book has already angered Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr., who says it could harm an investigation he had stopped but revived and revived Trump, who is threatening to sue for defamation.

Pomerantz was recruited in December 2020 by Braggs’ predecessor, Cy Vance Jr., to come out of semi-retirement and lead the investigation. But he and another top lawyer quit in protest when Bragg, who inherited the case, didn’t pull the trigger in February 2021.

Pomerantz: We Had a Case, Not a Slam Dunk

The book offers a rare look at the way prosecutors build a criminal case, detailing how investigators collect evidence, interview witnesses, and disagree on exactly how to proceed with what what may be the most important work of a local DA in American history. Pomerantz is convinced that the evidence proves that Trump lied on financial documents, and he is laying out various criminal charges that his team is ready to slap against the disgraced former president.

But the book also shows that this case is not easy despite the common view that Trump should be impeached.

We had a case, but it wasn’t without its issues, and certainly couldn’t be described as a slam dunk, Pomerantz wrote.

One of the most surprising revelations was that junior prosecutors on the team had serious reservations about their ability to successfully prosecute Trump in court even though, according to Pomerantz, no one thought he was innocent. While the evidence clearly shows that the Trump Organization routinely lied to banks about the head’s wealth, in some cases simply inflating the numbers to inflate the value of golf courses and buildings, more it is difficult to prove that Trump did this with the intent to deceive. . The book describes how prosecutors overworked themselves under pressure to wrap up the investigation before Vance’s scheduled political departure, the DA overseeing the investigation, at one point there was little reluctance. uprising.

The team thought it would be irresponsible to try to prosecute the case before the end of the year, Pomerantz wrote, adding later that many of the lawyers were relentlessly negative, thinking of all the difficulties and issues in the case and seemingly refusing to acknowledge the positive ones.

Some team members characterized the case as weak, while another cited several fatal flaws. Some met privately with Bragg to tell him about their reservations. During Zoom meetings, some team members remained silent and stone-faced, making Pomerantz feel like he was the only one in charge.

It was disappointing to feel like we were marching into battle with our guns and gear on, but when we looked at the rest of the platoon we saw many conscientious objectors, Pomerantz wrote.

The Michael Cohen Factor

Another surprising twist is that the entire case was solved in part due to the DA’s reliance on witness testimony from Michael Cohen’s attorney who paid porn star Stormy Daniels money to keep her quiet about his affair. to Trump, convicted for that and lying, got it. disbarred, and spent most of his time trashing the boss who betrayed him. The head of the offices of the major economic crimes bureau, Julieta Lozano, refused to believe a word from Cohens mouth and eventually left the team.

It got worse when New York Attorney General Letitia James filed public documents detailing the extent of the fraud at the Trump Organization, only for Cohen to do several interviews identifying himself as a key witness. It reached a breaking point at a meeting on Feb. 9, 2022, when Bragg commented that he could not see a world in which he would indict Trump and call Michael Cohen as a prosecution witness, Pomerantz wrote.

The former prosecutor lamented Cohen’s situation, writing that his relentless focus on his own self-importance does not help his credibility. Unfortunately, he studied the art of self-aggrandizement at the feet of the master. Cohens penchant for publicity, exaggeration, and grandiose statements played into the hands of those who distrusted him.

While the book is expected to offer a damning description of Braggs mishandling of the case, it actually does some of the opposite by explaining how the lead prosecutor could not be convinced that the case was strong enough. The real break appears to be Pomerantz’s insistence that it’s better to try and fail than just give up.

However, he still takes jabs at the new DA.

Getting Alvin Bragg

In one scene, Pomerantz describes how Bragg completely refuted his first major briefing on the most consequential case his office could bring.

Alvin entered the meeting late, often checked his phone, and then left early, saying that he only wanted to see the important documents, as if the entire vast case could be turned into a collection of a few important documents, which meaning, writes Pomerantz. This is the main meeting for the new district attorney to review our incipient case against the former president!

The DA’s office retracted this statement, attributed to Bragg: After reviewing all the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz’s investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case, as well as those brought me: more work is needed. In another way, the plane of Mr. Pomerantz is not yet ready for flight.

And the DA took a personal shot at the author, saying Pomerantz decided to quit a year ago and sign a book deal.

Braggs’ office also pointed to a critical statement made Friday by the state district attorneys’ association, which expressed grave concerns about the memo.

Clearly, prosecutors in the previous iteration of the DA’s team understood the gravity of the investigation, with an interoffice memo warning about how it could cause civil unrest, or public unrest, and threaten the lives of those involved. prosecutor himself a prosecution.

Investigators even considered filing lesser charges against Trump that seemed easier to prove but would only result in nonsense.

I thought a misdemeanor case was a chickenshit maneuver, because misdemeanor charges would devalue the seriousness of the misconduct we were investigating, Pomerantz wrote.

In the end, Pomerantz and Dunne discussed what they considered the best angle to prosecute Trump: tie everything together to show that Trump acted with intent to commit crimes because the trail of forged documents was so long.

The proper way to proceed, we thought, was to file felony charges based on the entire panoply of falsified business records that Trump helped create: the falsified documents related to hush money payments and payments by Michael Cohens, the false financial statements, the false accounting spreadsheets created to support the financial statements, and more, Pomerantz wrote.

All told, the book describes what appears to be an overzealous special prosecutor riddled with complicated financial records who can’t get colleagues on board with a moonshot case and a leadership change that seals its fate.

The question now is whether Bragg is ready to do so. After much urging by Pomerantz to hire a bigshot federal prosecutor to impeach Trump in early 2022, Bragg finally did so recently when he hired Matthew Colangelo, a top Justice Department official who previously helped impeach former presidents who break the law Trump Foundation charity.

And as Bragg said last month, We now move to the next chapter.

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