Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has kept his cool as Republicans have ramped up their pressure campaign against him. For weeks now, his office has been engaged in a back-and-forth with the House Judiciary Committee over the committee’s demand for documents and testimony related to his prosecution of former President Donald Trump. But now it’s clear that Bragg is done playing nice, and he is asking the courts to end this farce.
Even before a grand jury voted to indict Trump, Republicans warned Bragg that he’d regret what they deemed a “politically motivated prosecutorial decision.” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is leading that charge from his perch atop the Judiciary Committee. It’s clear that Jordan, one of Trump’s top allies in Congress, and other members of the House GOP are trying to influence the outcome of the trial — or at the very least ensure Bragg will pay a political cost for it.
The very public nature of the “investigation” into the Manhattan DA’s investigation, though, provided ample fodder for a federal lawsuit Bragg filed in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday. In it, his attorneys called out the shifting excuses Jordan has offered when he has demanded secret details about an ongoing criminal investigation, as well as the way Trump’s lawyers have urged the House GOP to intercede. Bragg’s attorneys asked for the courts to quash a pair of subpoenas that have been sent to current and former members of his office.
First, a quick irony: The main bit of case law Bragg’s lawsuit cites throughout the filing is Trump v. Mazars USA, the Supreme Court decision affirming that while Congress has the right to issue subpoenas in its investigations, it doesn’t have an unlimited right. The decision accordingly included a four-point test for whether a subpoena actually fit within Congress’s role under the Constitution — and Jordan’s request fails all four points, Bragg’s suit asserts. In effect, it’s using a ruling…
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