John Minchillo/AP
- A NY court has blocked the first subpoena issued by a House GOP inquiry into Trump's hush-money prosecution.
- Ex-Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz had been ordered to submit to Judiciary Committee questioning Thursday.
- That's now on hold while committee chair Jim Jordan and DA Alvin Bragg continue fighting over the inquiry.
A federal appeals court has hit the brakes, for now, on Republican plans to question former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, a move that stymies the House Judiciary Committee's probe of Donald Trump's Manhattan hush-money prosecution.
Pomerantz, who recently published a book critical of the prosecution, had been summoned to testify in Washington at 10 a.m. Thursday morning, by order of the committee's first investigatory subpoena.
His testimony is now on hold while a panel of three federal appellate judges in Manhattan reviews a lower court decision that on Wednesday had compelled Pomerantz's testimony.
The 2nd US Court of Appeals' last-minute stay of Pomerantz's testimony "reflects no judgement regarding the merits of the parties' respective positions," the court's decision says.
Bragg's office must file court papers by Friday explaining why Pomerantz should not testify, and why Wednesday's decision should be overturned. The Judiciary Commitee will have until Saturday to respond.
The halting of Pomerantz's questioning is the latest turn in a fight between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office this month won the first prosecution of a former president, and judiciary committee chair Rep. Jim Jordan, a pro-Trump Republican whose inquiry aims to challenge that prosecution.
On Monday, Jordan brought the committee to Manhattan for a field hearing, at which he criticized Bragg as "soft on real crime." He met with strong pushback from committee Democrats, who pointed out that crime in Manhattan and the rest of New York City is far lower than crime in cities in Jordan's home state of Ohio.
Bragg has sued to fight the committee's inquiry into the hush-money prosecution, under which Trump is facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Bragg's challenge of the Pomerantz subpoena is his first effort in that lawsuit.