In his book about how that investigation fell apart, former special assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz explained the kind of hurdles his team had to overcome to build a historic criminal case against the Teflon Don:
To rebut the claim that Trump believed his own ‘hype’… we would have to show, and stress, that Donald Trump was not legally insane,” Pomerantz wrote.
“Was Donald Trump suffering from some sort of mental condition that made it impossible for him to distinguish between fact and fiction?” he asked, noting that a group of high-powered lawyers advising the DA’s office “discussed whether Trump had been spewing bullshit for so many years about so many things that he could no longer process the difference between bullshit and reality.
The Daily Beast on Friday received an advance copy of People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account, which hits store shelves next Tuesday.
The book has already managed to piss off Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr., who claims it could hurt the investigation he paused but just revived—as well as Trump, who is threatening to sue for defamation.
It has been noted that Pomerantz was recruited in December 2020 by Bragg’s predecessor, Cy Vance Jr., to come out of semi-retirement and lead the investigation. But he and another top lawyer quit in protest when Bragg, who inherited the case, wouldn’t pull the trigger in February 2021.
The book offers a rare look inside the way prosecutors build a criminal case, detailing how investigators collected evidence, interviewed witnesses, and disagreed over how exactly to proceed with what could be the most significant undertaking by a local DA in American history. Pomerantz is convinced that the evidence proves Trump lied on financial documents, and he lays out the various criminal charges his team was ready to slap on the disgraced former president.
But the book also shows this case wasn’t easy—despite the commonly held view that Trump should be indicted already.
One of the most surprising revelations is that junior prosecutors on the team had serious reservations about their ability to successfully prosecute Trump in court—even though, according to Pomerantz, no one thought he was innocent. The evidence clearly showed that the Trump Organization routinely lied to banks about the head honcho’s wealth but in some cases simply multiplying fanciful numbers to hyperinflate the value of golf courses and buildings, it was harder to prove that Trump did it with the intent to defraud.
The book describes how overworked prosecutors under pressure to wrap up the investigation before the scheduled political departure of Vance, the DA who greenlit the investigation, at one point “had a mini-revolt.”