House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has subpoenaed a former Manhattan assistant district attorney Thursday who was part of the investigation into former President Donald Trump until last year.

The committee previously requested the prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, appear for a deposition voluntarily, in part because he went public with his disagreements with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s strategy and detailed internal debate over the merits of the alleged crimes in a memoir published in February.

Pomerantz’s book “reveals the extent to which the New York County District Attorney’s Office’s investigation of President Trump appears to have been politically motivated,” Jordan wrote Thursday. “Specifically, you describe your eagerness to investigate President Trump, writing that you were ‘delighted’ to join an unpaid group of lawyers advising on the Trump investigations, and joking that salary negotiations had gone ‘great’ because you would have paid to join the investigation”

A call to Pomerantz’s law office was not immediately returned.

"The House GOP continues to attempt to undermine an active investigation and ongoing New York criminal case with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation," Bragg said in a statement Thursday. "Repeated efforts to weaken state and local law enforcement actions are an abuse of power and will not deter us from our duty to uphold the law."

"These elected officials would better serve their constitutents and the country, and fulfill their oath of office, by doing their jobs in Congress and not intruding on the sovereignty of the state of New York by interfering in an ongoing criminal matter in state court," Bragg continued.

https://t.co/60cewA5Nc0 pic.twitter.com/wZ4X6SVDLy

— Alvin Bragg (@ManhattanDA) April 6, 2023

When he resigned in February 2022, Pomernantz wrote in a letter to Bragg that he was leaving because the newly-elected district attorney had pumped the brakes on the investigation into hush money payments that were allegedly made by the former president during his 2016 campaign.

In the letter, later published by the New York Times, Pomerantz wrote he believed Trump was guilty of “numerous” felonies and that “the team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did.”

“I fear that your decision means that Mr. Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes,” Pomerantz wrote. “I have worked too hard as a lawyer, and for too long, now to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice.”

This sentiment, and sentiment later shared in his memoir, is at the center of what Jordan and his Republican colleagues want to speak with Pomerantz about, according to their letter 

“Last year, you resigned from the office over Bragg’s initial reluctance to move forward with charges, shaming Bragg in your resignation letter—which was subsequently leaked—into bringing charges,” Jordan wrote in a March 22 letter to Pomerantz. “Based on your unique role in this matter, and your subsequent public statements prejudicing the impartiality of any prosecution, we request your cooperation with our oversight of this politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”

Pomerantz wrote a response on March 27 that he would not testify, according to Jordan, saying the Manhattan district attorney’s office had requested him not to cooperate. 

In the letter announcing the subpoena Thursday, Jordan wrote that much of what the committee is interested in has already been discussed in Pomerantz’s memoir and media interviews, claiming the public disclosures nullified any confidentiality or privilege arguments the prosecutor and his former colleagues in Manhattan could make.

Last year, the House Jan. 6 committee referred Jordan to the House Ethics Committee for refusing to comply with their subpoena connected to the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The Thursday letter also lists excerpts of the book where Pomerantz compares Trump to mafia don John Gotti, calls the former president a “malignant narcissist,” and compared the investigation to his previous experience of helping indict Osama bin Laden for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“These perceptions appear to have colored your work as a special assistant district attorney, to the point that you even resigned because the investigation into President Trump was not proceeding fast enough for your liking,” Jordan continued, going on to cite public reporting that Pomerantz’s resignation and book contributed to political pressures on Bragg to move forward with the prosecution.

Jordan has emerged as a chief defender of Trump in the press and the halls of Congress in recent years, particularly after news of the indictment became public. He and two other committee chairs wrote a letter to Bragg last month demanding documents, communications and testimony related to the Manhattan prosecutor’s “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” Jordan and other House Republicans have not ruled out subpoenaing Bragg or current members of his office.

“As you are no doubt aware, former President Trump has directed harsh invective against District Attorney Bragg and threatened on social media that his arrest or indictment in New York may unleash ‘death & destruction,’” Bragg wrote in response. “As Committee Chairmen, you could use the stature of your office to denounce these attacks and urge respect for the fairness of our justice system and for the work of the impartial grand jury.”

“Instead, you and many of your colleagues have chosen to collaborate with Mr. Trump’s efforts to vilify and denigrate the integrity of elected state prosecutors and trial judges and made unfounded allegations that the Office’s investigation, conducted via an independent grand jury of average citizens serving New York State, is politically motivated,” the Manhattan district attorney added, one day after the grand jury voted to criminally charge a former president for the first time in U.S. history.