REUTERS
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has agreed to testify before a GOP-led House committee about his hush-money case against former President Donald Trump, according to multiple reports.
Last month, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that Bragg testify at a planned June 13 session regarding “the unprecedented political prosecution of President Trump.”
Jordan also targeted Bragg prosecutor Matthew Colangelo, who bounced around from New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office to the Justice Department before it was announced he would join the Manhattan DA’s team in 2022.
Critics contend that stepping down from federal prosecutorial roles to a local one, as Colangelo did, was unusual, and Trump accused him of being politically motivated in the move.
Bragg’s office said it has not ruled out allowing Colangelo to testify but that it needed to study the request further.
The DA’s counsel, Leslie Dubeck, described Bragg’s agreement to testify as “voluntary cooperation.”
Dubeck added that the two sides still need to work through “various scheduling conflicts” to set up a date, which would likely be after Trump’s sentencing in July, The Associated Press reported.
Trump became the first president to be found guilty in a criminal case May 30.
A jury found him guilty of 34 counts related to falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments intended to cover up damaging stories about him, including involving his alleged extramarital affair with porn star Stormy Daniels.
The 45th president has vowed to appeal his conviction. He is slated to face sentencing July 11 — just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis., where Trump will be crowned the party’s 2024 presidential nominee.
Meanwhile, the Manhattan court where Trump was convicted is working through a social media post in which a self-described “professional s–tposter” claimed to have learned of a juror’s intention on how to vote in the case just before the verdict was handed down.
House Republicans have lambasted the prosecution of Trump, and some have suggested they will move to slash funding from the Justice Department or hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt over it. It does not appear as though they have the votes to do all of that.
“We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence,” Garland later shot back. “And we will not back down from defending democracy.”
Jordan (R-Ohio), who also chairs the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, previously battled Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis for documents about her prosecution of Trump over alleged election fraud there.
At the moment, the 10 counts Trump is facing in Fulton County are in limbo pending an appeal as to whether Willis can remain on the case because of an affair she had with Nathan Wade, the former special prosecutor on it.
The House Judiciary Committee did not immediately return a Post request for comment Sunday.