Alvin Bragg just outmaneuvered Jim Jordan
On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals temporarily sided with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and former Manhattan DA’s office prosecutor Mark Pomerantz in their joint effort to shield Pomerantz from having to testify to Jim Jordan’s circus of a House committee. This temporary ruling gave Bragg the upper hand, and now he’s using it.
Keep in mind that if Pomerantz testifies, he’ll say that Donald Trump is guilty of even more crimes than Bragg charged Trump with. This testimony will not make Trump look good. But the entire point of Jordan’s stunt is to try to trip up Pomerantz and get him to unwittingly reveal some detail or aspect of Bragg’s case that gives Trump the upper hand in terms of filing an appeal, or something along those lines.
So now Bragg has agreed to let Pomerantz testify to the Jim Jordan circus, but only with a representative from the Manhattan DA’s office present. This is perfect. It’ll ensure that Bragg’s people can jump in and veto any questions or topics that they don’t want Pomerantz to have to discuss, under the premise that it’s not appropriate to discuss ongoing criminal investigations. And because Jordan is losing this battle in court anyway, he’ll have to swallow what Bragg is giving him, which is nothing.
So if Bragg was on track to win this battle over Jim Jordan in court, why even give him this much? Because the one thing Jordan could have gained by losing in court was the ability to spend the next year pushing the talking point that Bragg and Pomerantz must have something to hide. But now, by giving Pomerantz’s testimony to Jordan in a sanitized way that doesn’t actually help Jordan, it’ll also take Jordan’s main talking point away.
In politics, the winning solution often isn’t the most “aggressive” or absolutist one. Instead, the savviest solution is typically the one that produces the biggest win. Alvin Bragg and Mark Pomerantz appear to have savvily threaded this needle, even while Jim Jordan “aggressively” fumbles around and gets nowhere.
