Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office on Friday slammed the House GOP’s efforts to conduct oversight of the indictment and prosecution of former president Trump, calling it an “illegal incursion.”
House Republicans are fueling “baseless and inflammatory allegations that our investigation is politically motivated,” Leslie B. Dubeck, the general counsel for Bragg’s office, wrote in a letter to three top House Republicans, obtained by Fox News.
In anticipation of Trump’s indictment last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Jim Jordan sent a letter to Bragg demanding that he submit records and testify before Congress regarding his probe of Trump.
Dubeck said Trump is entitled to challenge the charges against him in court and utilize the processes and protections in New York State’s criminal justice system but he cannot “interfere” with proceedings in New York State.
Dubeck argued the committees lack justification to oversee a state criminal prosecution. The committee’s request for information about the status of the state grand jury investigation into Trump was “unprecedented,” Dubeck said.
“The Committees’ attempted interference with an ongoing state criminal investigation — and now prosecution — is an unprecedented and illegal incursion on New York’s sovereign interests,” Dubeck wrote in the rebuttal.
A Manhattan grand jury voted Thursday to indict Trump in connection with a hush-money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels. Following the news, Trump said that Bragg’s “witch-hunt” prosecution against him is “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”
Trump wrote on social media last week that he believed he would soon be arrested. His lawyers told the New York Post he is expected to surrender to law enforcement in New York next week.
“This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal,” a spokesperson for the DA’s office said. “Guidance will be provided when the arraignment date is selected.”
Trump is now the first former president in U.S. history to face criminal charges.
On Friday, NYPD officers were ordered to report for duty in uniform for precautionary deployments in case unrest erupts surrounding Trump’s indictment, a spokesperson for the department told Fox.
“It’s just in preparation for anything that could happen,” the spokesperson said.