Prosecutors leading Trump criminal probe resign, clouding case’s future
NEW YORK — The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned Wednesday amid a month long pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter, throwing the future of the high-stakes inquiry into serious doubt.
The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Trump, the people said.
Pomerantz confirmed that he had resigned but declined to elaborate. Dunne declined to comment.
Without Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury, one of the people said. They have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.
The precise reasons for Bragg’s pullback are unknown, and he has made few public statements about the status of the inquiry since taking office. In a statement responding to the resignations of the prosecutors, a spokesperson for Bragg said that he was “grateful for their service” and that the investigation was ongoing.
Time is running out for this grand jury, whose term is scheduled to expire in April.
And without Dunne, a veteran of the office who has been closely involved with the inquiry for years, and Pomerantz, a leading figure in New York legal circles who was enlisted to work on it, the yearslong investigation could peter out.
The pause coincides with an escalation in the activity of a parallel civil inquiry by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is examining some of the same conduct by Trump.
Another criminal inquiry into the former president has been gaining steam. In recent weeks, a district attorney in Atlanta asked a judge to convene a grand jury for an investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Another criminal investigation, in New York’s Westchester County, is examining Trump’s financial dealings at one of his company’s golf courses.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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