i am honored to introduce mark pomerantz to all of you. mark received a b.a. from harvard college and a j.d. from the university of michigan law school. he worked as a federal prosecutor in the u.s. attorney's office for the

southern of new york. he has also been on the faculty of columbia law school and has lectured on criminal procedure and white collar law at harvard and stanford law school's. and from february. 2021 to february 2022, he worked pro-bono a special assistant district attorney in the office of the new york district attorney cyrus vance, to assist with that office's criminal investigation into the personal and business finances of former president donald trump. this evening will talk about his new book, the people versus donald trump and this riveting work of nonfiction. pomeranz tells the story of his unprecedented investigation, why he believes donald trump should be prosecuted, and what we can learn about the nature of justice in america from extraordinary case. mark will be in conversation session with robert costa. robert is the chief election and campaign correspond for cbs news

where he covers national politics and american democracy. so everyone, let us welcome mark pomerantz and robert costa. i know much you all. it's great to be here. thanks very much. to politics and prose for hosting this conversation to. c-span audience and to everyone the neighborhood who stop by and mark. thank you for being here to discuss your new book a very in-depth look at this and ongoing investigation of former president donald trump. but before we dig into that, investigate that you participated in we're a leader in take me through your journey briefly from university of michigan law school to that call in december of 2020 to come aboard manhattan d.a. office. i'll try and confine that story to there were a lot of stops along the way after graduating school i clerked for a federal district judge edward weidenfeld

in new york city went on to a law clerk for potter stewart at the united states supreme court. and after that became an assistant united states attorney in the southern district of new york. i served there for four years and then left as chief of appeals i taught for a few years at columbia law school, then started a criminal defense boutique with a lawyer named ron fischetti. and as things turned out, ron became the personal attorney to donald trump and was trump and was asked to represent trump. shortly after i was asked to participate in the investigation of donald trump. and since we had been law partners for a number of years, it was an odd set of circumstances. in any event, after practicing in a small criminal defense

boutique, i turned to practice in large law but went back the us attorney's office for a few years as chief of the criminal division in the southern district of new york. then continued to practice essentially white collar, criminal defense handling investigations, representing individuals and entities until i basically retired at the end of 2012, i was fairly young, but i didn't want to sit in conference rooms anymore without sun and to questions that not elegantly answered by my client and not elegantly put by the government. so i decided retire. and i was retired fired when i got the call. start working on the work as michael corleone moment did you think you're out?

then you get pulled back in. but why were you pulled back and i know you explain a lot of this in the book, but for those of us who are just maybe starting to read it or you're just finishing it, help us understand why a federal or a former prosecutor is brought by a manhattan da's office to investigate violations of law. well i think, first of all, i can't say for sure because i didn't ask that question. you know, i didn't protest when i got the call, i this is about the most interesting work one can do. and if somebody wanted me to help. i thought i might be able to help. and i was delighted to do it. i had had a long background handling financial on both sides as a prosecutor and defense lawyer, i had handled organized crime cases both as a prosecute shooter and as a defense attorney. and i am only assuming that

combination of background and and experience was attractive to cy vance and but again, i didn't cross-examine him when he asked, i was absolutely delighted to to work. so you come into the manhattan attorney's office working with cy vance, working with other attorneys, and you're looking at the trump organization and you're looking at how trump has articulated his profile in recent decades. tell me about one of the main characters there. someone i would spot over the years when i would up to trump tower to report on then mr. trump. allen weisselberg i allen weisselberg we knew from the work had been done and the reporting that had been done was donald trump's right hand man. you saw him as of a brooding

omnipresence in many of the photographs of donald trump. we knew he had worked not only for donald trump for decades but had worked for trump's father, fred trump, for a long time. it was clear from the investigation that had been done that weisselberg knew he was the money guy in the organization to the extent there were financial crimes that we were investigating weisselberg would have to know about them. it's not a huge organization. it is run by a small group of trusted employees, many of whom had been with for decades. weisselberg perhaps being one of the oldest, most longstanding employees. and so as we started at crimes involving the financial control system, the company, the financial statements, what expenses were paid, how they were documented. allen weisselberg had designed the accounting system. everybody in the accounting

system reported up to him, and it was obvious that he was going to be somebody whom, if he could be induced to cooperate, would be a of a lot of information. and when you step and look at all the ongoing investigation into former president trump, there's the six committee there is the ongoing grand jury. justice department of january six and so many others. the new york state investigation. but in the manhattan da's office. let's zoom in on your part of this. what were you looking for? as you said, this was a small company, a family company. in many ways. it's not like investigating google or microsoft or pfizer. it's a small company. so what were the challenges in endeavor from the start? when you come into the office? well, the challenges and the reason it was difficult came from a number there were a number of different reasons.

one is, unlike a large company, like a or a pfizer, the trump organization did not cooperate with law enforcement at all ever. there were no documents that were supplied on a voluntary basis. if you wanted something, it had to be drag out of the company. if you wanted to speak to a company employee, they weren't brought in. whether they had any criminal exposure or not. they had to be subpoenaed into a grand jury and so at every step along way, just the gathering of information was difficult and indeed it took 18 months. this was before joined the investigation, but it took 18 months and two trips to the united states supreme court to get donald trump's tax returns and basically accounting information and. so just getting the information, the documentary information was

difficult and it was clear that within the trump organization, donald trump ran the organization with an iron hand and people were not going to cooperate without his blessing. and he wasn't going to give his blessing. so it was it was a circumstance where every every fact had to be kind of dragged out years ago, right before trump announced his 2016 campaign, i was writing for washington post and trump came to the post and he had a two page document about his finances. and it was not a formal document any way. and i remember he tossed it across the table at me and. i said to him, how do you know your name alone is worth billions of dollars? and he says, trust me, i know. and i said, okay there was no real proof there, but he made these grand statements about his worth now saying that to a reporter is one thing. but what's so interesting about

this book is that you focus on something called social cs yeah. and that is so important in this story in understanding how you as an investigator, as a lawyer looked at his financial statements and saw possible crime. sure. the ostrowski statements of financial condition and we had the benefit of a lot of fact finding that had been done by the new york state attorney general, letitia james, and the facts that she ultimately found their way into a civil complaint that she filed, which is over 200 pages long and chock full of evidence to these financial statements. but what we discovered was that trump had prepared an annual financial statement because they had to be supplied to banks under loan covenants and for some loans. the banks were willing to make

loans based on personal guarantees. but if they were going to get trump's personal guarantee, they wanted a personal financial statement, then that's common banking practice. in the private wealth management industry and section of the bank where he did primarily with deutsche bank. i'm talking about in the years in question. so trump had to provide annual financial under bank policy. they were not the way to include any value attached to brand value. trump did get a letter from a branding company that he would wave around, and i guess at one point he waived it in front of you that indicated his personal brand, the value of his name was, i think, three or three and a half billion dollars. and one of the interesting little factoids we discovered was that there was no date on that letter. and spoke to michael cohen at one point about the letter and

cohen explained, there's no date on the letter because. he wants to be able to use the letter whenever he wants to under whatever circumstances he wants to. and there's no need to bring it current. it's it's an evergreen brand letter that gives him three and a half billion dollars to tack on to his financial statements for political purposes and so on. for banks, you can't use brand value and they didn't attribute much meaning to a letter that says and here's another three and a half billion dollars. they wanted wanted regular financial statements prepared by an outside accounting firm, and that's what they got. the problem was when the accounting firm put out the financial statements on its letterhead, it did so on the basis, representations and they got from donald trump and the trump organization that.

the numbers were compiled with exceptions pursuant to generally accepted accounting principles and that no information was withheld from the auditors and that the numbers that were provided were fairly present. trump's financial statements, all of those statements provided trump signed guarantees that the bank signed representations and compliance certificate dates vouching for the accuracy of the financial statements. but the financial statements were phony for want of a better. what was your aha moment as an investigator where you said to yourself. i see case here it it's with information from the new york attorney general's office and this is the sequence of events is recounted in the book and over the course of time it became apparent that it's not

one asset or one year that's overstated and the magnitude of the overstatement depending on the asset was massive. his triplex apartment was valued at for several years at over hundred million dollars on the basis of containing 30,000 square feet, except it didn't have 30,000 square feet. it had 11,000 square feet, he told people that it had 30,000 square feet and we had testimony from a reporter who indeed had been told directly by donald trump that the apartment had 33,000 square feet, but that's one value for one asset. and the financial statements were permeated by that kind of but an aha moment came early on when we were speaking to cohen about the financial statements and michael cohen was the first one to float the notion that the

financial statements had been falsified when he testified, before the house oversight committee. and what cohen told us, when spoke to him was that the that he had been in conversations directly with trump and weisselberg berg, in which trump set the net worth that he wanted to have for whatever reason. he decided on the net worth and then the values of the assets that made up the net worth were decided upon in order to reach the target figure that trump had given for the net worth. so the values for the assets were reverse engineered according to the net worth target, which is not really the way you're supposed to do it. your net worth crime there is it fraud. if you would move forward with an indictment on that front, what would the crime with the charge be? the crime would have been filing false business instruments.

the financial state and other crimes. it is a crime under new york law, although a misdemeanor to utter a false financial statement. it becomes a felony when documents are falsified for the purpose of committing another crime. and here the documents were given to the bank. they became business records of the bank. the certification were accompanied by the financial statements. and so the certificate liens were given to the bank with the intent of committing or concealing the crime, of uttering false financial statements. and there are other permutations but it's essentially the crime. you can't lie to a bank to get loans. and this isn't only crime you're investigating. you mentioned michael cohen, the longtime trump adviser, kind of the fixer slash lawyer in trump's orbit. you call it the zombie case in the book. explain that how while you were

looking into the financial statements, you're also investigating the so-called zombie case in the role of michael cohen. sure. the zombie case we it at times the zombie case, because it was a theory of prosecution and some potential crimes that were investigated put aside because legal or factual problems reinvestigated. so they were exhumed a and put aside for a variety of reasons, reexamined yet again and it kept returning from the grave so often that we started to it as the zombie theory. what it involved was the concealment of the reimbursement to michael cohen of the hush money that he had paid to stormy daniels. most people who have have followed the trump saga recall

that it became public years ago, that michael cohen on, trump's behalf, had paid $130,000 to stormy daniels and her lawyer right before the election in. 2016. and at a time when she was threatening to expose her allegation that she had had an affair with donald trump, that was let's put i don't mean to interrupt. sure, but let's pause. you use the word threat. that's key to understanding your perception, the zombie case, because you believe trump was being threatened by stormy daniels, then the payment was in some way money? well, the first thing i looked at when i looked at these facts shortly after starting working on the case was. one other crime might be involved in the payment of the hush money and the disguise of the reimbursement because the

reimbursement took place in in a disguised fashion. if michael cohen had gotten first of all back up once. so i for a little bit of legal here but it's not a crime to pay hush money and it's not a crime to get reimbursed for paying hush money if you're the payer's lawyer. if michael cohen had given had received from donald trump a check that said in payment in reimbursement for the hush money that would have changed the whole legal landscape. but that's not what happened. the reimbursement to cohen was disguised. cohen got a home equity loan. he paid the money after getting a home equity loan. he then got reimbursed. first over a 12 month period. during 2007 18, while donald was in the white house at times receiving the reimbursement

checks from trump in the oval office of the white house, and he got the checks from trump as they were they were fashioned as payment of monthly legal expenses pursue into to retainer agreement acceptable no retainer agreement there no legal expenses and. the bookkeeping the documentation in the companies records was false. so again, another instance of creating false business records, but that crime under new york law is a misdemeanor unless it's committed with the intent to conceal or unless there's an intention to commit or conceal another crime. so we had look for another crime. one of the other crimes we looked at was, well, might it be money laundering and to be money laundering, money has to be the proceeds of illegal activity. and we started looking at well, maybe when the money was paid to stormy daniels and her lawyer,

it was already criminal proceeds because maybe it was the proceeds of an extortion for legal reasons. that theory just didn't pan out and we were left with a case where we could bring misdemeanor charges for falsifying the business records and maybe and raise a new issue of law, maybe a felony if the expenses if the business records were created with the intent to conceal the election law violation to which michael cohen pleaded guilty arising out of the payment to stormy daniels, but without getting into all of the gnarly details and legal issues, whether that federal crime counts under state law under new york law to make the misdemeanors a felony is an open question. and so it created the risk that if we charge case it will the charges be to a felony. when we first looked at this, we're investigating 87 other

felonies. we think at that early point that the right thing to do was to charge a bunch of crimes that might be reduced to a misdemeanor. we later decided we would join those charges with the other more serious felony charges that we developed growing out of the financial statements. it's a bit laborious. i know. so you're humming along. you're working the manhattan d.a. office, and you have an open question about how to formulate and indictment. but you're moving toward it. and then as the book documents, cyrus vance, manhattan district attorney, decides to leave your, world is upended. as an investigator, as you write in the book, a new district attorney ultimately comes in. alvin bragg. things seem to fall apart in in terms of your view of it? yes. and let me comment on on some of the way stations that you

mentioned, uh, cy vance, his tenure ended at the end of 2021. we knew as early as march that he march that year his tenure ended at the end of the year. we knew as early as mid-march that he was not going to be running for reelection. many people have asked, well why didn't you just hurry up and charge the case while cy vance was d.a. and then you wouldn't have deal with whatever the views be of an incoming administration? and the short answer to that question, we were working as fast and as hard as we could. we got the accounting records that became the basis for the potential prosecution toward the end of february 2021, by the end of june 2021, we had charged the trump organization, allen weisselberg with tax offenses relating to weisselberg's free apartment free cars, tuition for

his grandchildren and so on. that took some time. we then plunged into the financial statements and as i describe in the book that was no small task. it was like boiling the ocean, which was a phrase that one of my colleagues used because you're dealing with years of financial statements dozens assets and the method of valuation change from asset to asset and year to year. so understanding the of the financial statements took months and as we got toward the end of cy tenure by this point i should say i was working nights, weekends, holidays and many people on the team were working very hard. the question is, are we going to be able to get it done? there's no doubt that cy vance to make the decision and would liked to have seen charges if

charges were appropriate during his tenure. you know, i've seen written cy just dragged feet so that the case wouldn't be made and he could pass the buck on to his successor just couldn't be further from the truth we just couldn't get it done. we finally reached the point where we thought were in a position to make a charging decision and to move forward with the work that's necessary to charges work in the grand jury. drafting the indictment and so on. right around the end of 2021. and then a new district attorney arrived and foolishly, perhaps retrospect, as we were working along at the end of 2000, 21, we did not foresee i certainly did not foresee the change of administration would slow us down would prevent the case from

moving forward. and i don't think from the conversations we had that cy vance thought that that was going to happen we understood of course, that the new regime would have to vet the case. it would happen on the watch of the new district attorney and then new district attorney would have to make the decision that he was comfortable with the case and and it didn't happen the way we hoped. anticipated. and you resigned eventually. eventually, after it became clear that, the district attorney was not going to authorize the prosecution on the record, we had developed mark, here's what district attorney brag has said on the record in recent days. quote, this a quote to reporters we have active, ongoing investigation. so constrained from what i can say. but here's what i can say. i bring hard cases when they are ready. i came to the same conclusion that multiple senior

prosecutors, my office independently came to and that was that mark pomerantz case simply was not ready and quote your response? well, i it was ready, but apart from that dispute, which is a fact about nobody should really care what you should care about is that it has been a year since that time if the case wasn't ready in. january 2022. here we are. in february 2023. what's been done to make the case ready when is it going to be ready and. where do you believe the manhattan district attorney's office will indict trump? i am i'm loath to predict. first of all, i haven't been in the office for a year. i can't speak for the manhattan to be a little bit unfair to try and do that, i'd be personally

surprised if the financial statement case were indicted because i just haven't seen from the public reporting the kind forward motion and investigative steps that one might expect that case were getting ready to indict. but the the zombie the payment of the reimburse of the hush money payment through false business records, that case may well get made. it's certainly one that in the last months, there's been a lot of press about what the manhattan district attorney has been doing and the new efforts that have been made. michael cohen has been in to meet with keep showing up on television with lanny davis at his side. don't get between michael cohen and a camera. but having said that, when it came to describing the the

circumstances that we were investigating, look michael was cooperative he's he's a peculiar cooperative witness because he didn't have a sort over his head. he had been prosecuted, convicted, served his time. he was cooperating. i'm not going to speak for his motives. that requires a degree that i don't have. but he was cooperating without the customary expectation of leniency that most cooperators have. as a long time observer of michael cohen, as a reporter, i would venture, based on my reporting if you have seen michael cohen, donald trump interact up close, you're not surprised about the cooperation. i'll leave it at that. final question. we get to the q&a, if you'd like to ask a question, please up and make sure you ask it in the microphone which is over here.

but before we get to the q&a, you can start line it up if you would like. you will say something very interesting. the book, quote nevertheless, the feds have not gone near trump's financial statements or his tax returns and that really put a red flag in front of me as i read the book. i've been spending a lot of time reporting on the grand juries and trump and the federal investigation of trump. but you're right, it appears the financial aspect of the trump organization is not part of the scope of their inquiry based least of what we know so far. what can you tell us about that decision on the federal level? as a former prosecutor, i really can't shed much light on that. i describe in the book the both relating the substantive law procedure law resources, the reasons why an investigation

like the one we were doing would be vastly easier if it was being conducted under the auspices of the of justice. the statute or better the procedure is better, the punishment is greater, the resources are greater. we were doing it because somebody had to do it. why the feds didn't undertake that investigation at least once? donald trump was no longer of the united states. i don't know now before. he lost the reelection one could say, i suppose. why carry forward with the investigate section under department of justice policy? he cannot be indicted as a sitting president. i'm sure that that explains the lack of an investigation. the manhattan d.a. was donald trump when he a sitting president, trying to and had all the litigation and

continued to investigate and would have had the same issues i think trying to a criminal case against the sitting president as the doj had. but why the investigation didn't get jumpstarted on the federal level at least once trump lost the election was no longer. i don't know. it's possible, i suppose that the feds were to the work was being done by the manhattan d.a. and the state attorney general. but if the feds want to do something they don't usually wait for state to finish. it really works the other way. so i just can't answer that. it's a question that's worth asking. does anyone have a question can line up at the microphone as we wait for someone to come over and ask a question, i'll ask a

that's been raised. and since there's books being published, let's say the manhattan district attorney's office does move forward with an indictment. the microphones over here, how would this book complicate such an indictment, if at all? sure. look, i thought a lot about that as i was writing the book and deciding whether to write the book. i think you can sense from the tenor of the book and perhaps my remarks. i did not want to do anything that would mess up a potential prosecution of donald trump. and i became satisfied that i wouldn't because the facts underlying any potential prosecution, whether it's the zombie case or the financial statement case, are out there in the public. the facts relating to the stormy daniels hush money payments and their reimburse settlement have been in the public domain for, i think, at least three or four years.

michael cohen described them in his book. stormy daniels described in her book. then she went on michael collins podcast and spoke it. those facts were became public in the federal prosecution. michael cohen and in the reporting that was done by many people and there were no secrets about that scenario. you that are contained in book the we brought the facts but it's not a circumstance where i was letting katz out of the bag the cats were running free for quite some time and the financial statements letitia james in her civil complaint against donald trump based on the preparation of false financial statements laid out in

chapter and verse in literally hundreds pages, the details of why financial statements were false, how they had been used with banks, insurance companies and other recipes, and indeed, she said, are the crimes that were committed. and those were the crimes we intended to bring. so the case we had was out there and public before my book, months before my book was published. it seems to me that trump is getting away. everybody is taking so long to get him. did he have any influence on the district attorney or other prosecutors? i don't understand. is it just because he was president? we're going to drag this out. i mean, if you look back at mueller's investigation, did a thorough investigation.

he out possible obstruction of justice. then he surprises us with saying we can't indict the president. he should have said at the beginning, declared, so let's me but why? when they came in excuse me, merrick garland came in. anybody? why didn't they prosecute over those obstruction of justice charges? they seemed to let everything just go on by. look, one of the points i tried to talk about in the book was that one of the things that may that i thought deserved to be discussed, i don't think it should be happening, is that when it comes donald trump, there's a desire to have a perfect case to not pull the trigger if. there's any real shot of losing

the case, not to act. the circumstance is virtually compel you to act. and if the course prosecutors follow, you wind up, in effect, a different system of justice for donald trump, then you do, as i call him, in the book, joe blow from kokomo, somebody else on these same facts who wasn't the former president of the united states would have been indicted in my view very, very quickly. and, you know, you hear the expression that you don't shoot for the king unless you're, sure, you can kill the king. what's wrong with that? my view, among other things, is that when you're dealing with a would be king, if you don't your shot when you can, you're going to wind up with a monarchy and not a democracy.

so one of the reasons i wrote the book to try and encourage discussion about how prosecutors ought deal cases like this, you have to, in my judgment, move quickly and and decisively that doesn't mean you're not careful, right? you're supposed to be careful when. you charge anybody with a crime. but what it does mean is that you can't allow the concern for the repercussion tions or the concern about nailing down a certain victory to paralyze you. it whoa. before we get a question from someone else, if you don't mind reading my mind, just try to be fair fair there, sir. i've about your federalization. the political process and so i suppose that would be if if your

motivation for australian prosecution of certain investigations pearl harbor you shouldn't do it. but i'm just out loud here. but did you think about that and do you think that that test. yeah. and that's another topic that i try to talk about at some length in the book i do agree that the criminal justice system should not be politicized. you don't as a prosecutor, you bring political cases. you want serve a political end. they're not supposed to be acts of political warfare. having said that, i'm now speaking obviously as a private citizen, exercising my first amendment rights. i'm no longer speaking for the government. i can conclude, as a matter of my own political beliefs, that it's important for prosecutors to act when they have legitimate

cases, when they can bring their cases with adequate under all the procedure that we have in to act and legally and having that's not inconsistent with prosecutors keeping politics aside. i can tell you as we had our huddles in the manhattan da's office, there was not a moment that donald trump's politics came into the discussion. we were talking about evidence. we were talking about law, we were talking about witnesses. we were talking about where to go next. the investigation. there wasn't a moment when even in private conversation, people said, you know, we really to get this guy because, it's just not what prosecutor are supposed to do. and we all knew that. and just didn't happen.

so i thank you so much for for speaking out. i think one of the things that i as someone else has said, i haven't understood enough is i think it's extremely important that you come and speak out because the public we see the obstruction, justice, nothing happening. we see the fact mueller didn't really investigate doesn't seem the financial aspect of some of the ties of trump to russia and then we have i interested in your comment on the more recent indictment of the the counterintelligence officer and head of counterintelligence fdny who was also linked to deripaska and i've been sort of surprised there hasn't been was shocked actually that there was not press coverage of this because this is when you start connect and you know you said dropping i love the expression of dancing to the what's the the range ops of accountability it's perfect

but you know in less unless we start to get some answers to these things and a less the press i'm to speak to you now as well starts really asking these questions. yes, i know. but starts asking questions because we seem to getting distracted by, you know, this that there's politicization of doj, everything else, when that's just not been borne out by the fact. in fact, it's been quite opposite. it's been, as you said a lack of action because this fear otherwise there be more explanation about what has happened why hasn't it happened so people see it. i think it's extremely important to. speak out. and i wanted to thank you for that, but i also wanted to get your perspective on that recent indictment and. why hasn't it been covered more in the press? and the second part i really can't help you on the first part. thank you for your comment. i just say it's not easy.

i knew when i wrote this book, uh, that, uh, i would get attacked, uh, i knew that it broke norms. i knew that, uh, uh, that it's not something. prosecutor or former prosecutors. do you. don't tell tales out of school. you don't about what happens behind closed doors. you don't talk about evidence that not been included in a charging instrument and of the reason i did that is because of a personal view the and those are good policies and i follow those policies for my entire career. the reason i decided to do different here frankly to something that i read in robert costa's book peril the last words of the book, which resonate with me was peril

remains and it is my personal view that donald trump, unlike virtually any other perhaps any other criminal target of a criminal investigation, represents an existential threat to the rule of law. and if you are dealing with an existent. jewel. thank you. thank you. if you are dealing with an existential threat. the rule of law. there is an argument and perhaps even an obligation to put aside the usual prudential practices, the norms. now, i didn't break law by writing the book. i wasn't going to do that. but when it came to violate norms, when it came to talking about things that prosecutors don't talk about, i thought in these truly extraordinary circum stances, it was the right thing to do. and why i did it. thank you.

hello. to piggyback on what you were just saying about doj policies regarding speaking out and i appreciate an insider's perspective and a true speaker as much as anyone for maybe bob. are you kidding? reporters like when people speak out and. i'm certainly looking forward to a trump indictment to me after this event come this way. and i'm certainly looking to a trump indictment as much as anybody. but it's one thing for stormy daniels, michael cohen, to speak out publicly. it seems a little different even you're a private citizen that you had to nonpublic information previously. do you think that this opens a new avenue to a trump defense in in an in an inevitable prosecution. do you think that he'll single out your book as a way to protect himself? look may talk about book but the question legally and ethically whether talking about these things in the book made it substantially more for him to

get a fair trial if he's indicted and if there is a prosecution bearing in that. when i wrote the book there was no prosecution and there still is no prosecution but should there be a prosecution? and the issue was raised. does the book somehow prosecution him more difficult? i to say, given literally the oceans ink that have been spilled about donald trump over the number of years given thousands of hours that have been spent on every network everywhere in the world, talking about donald trump. to me, the notion that of all the stories that have been written and all the segments on tv, it's my book that's going to make it difficult for him to get a fair trial. i just don't think there's any

substance to that. i'm confident. look, i hope a lot of people buy the book, but i am confident that a year from whenever he you know, who knows if he'll be indicted, when he'll be indicted or when he'll be tried. but i'm confident that if day should come, the judge will be able to find jurors who have not read my book. let's pause for a second and look at trump's statement in response to your book. he brings up trump statement, brings up this. it does raise the question about the use. michael cohen as a key witness. here's trump's statement in part. wow. donald trump's quote here. well, the book just put out by crooked hillary's attorney, mark pomerantz is turning out to be a hit on the district attorney in the case with many fatal flaws. prosecutors. the da's office actually quit in protest and they thought because

they thought it was and very unfair to president trump. they also felt they didn't want to rely on a sleazebag, disbarred lawyer from hell, like michael cohen as a witness. in other words, they thought the case was terrible, a loser, but put aside the phrasing, this particular statement, it raises the issue of michael cohen is that the reason alvin bragg, the district attorney right now, has had reservation about bringing the people versus donald trump? that's impossible for me to say. you know, one of the you wrote a memo to him, though, you put the memo in the book. yeah. and tell us about the response that i wrote several memos him. one was perhaps inartfully phrased. i wrote it in lieu of a resignation on the morning i was going to the hospital for some surgery and it clearly didn't sit well with the district

attorney. i also wrote memo urging him to consider as he was considering to authorize the case. i wrote memo urging him to consider that some cases need to be brought even where there a substantial risk of loss because if they are not, the public will not have in the enforcement of the rule of law. and i believe that i gave him an example from my career where we done that, but we didn't have final, you know, closing sit down where he shared the particular reasons why the case wasn't going to go forward. learned more from the the statements in the media during the last week than i learned the time we were dealing with each other about what his thinking was or might have been. michael cohen.

what i to happen and i was glad to see if if indeed the media are true that alvin bragg sat down in person with cohen because don't know how you make a an appraisal of somebody credibility of how they'll appear on the witness stand, whether they'll be convincing without meeting the person and asking. one of the things that cy vance did during our investigation was sit in on grand testimony and sit in on witness interviews. and i recall vividly a meeting that we had with michael where we took him through the stormy daniels facts and the reaction was, you know, with proper preparation and with proper questioning, michael cohen can be a convincing witness. i believe that to be the. i believe he was telling truth

about the matters. we spoke with him about. and if indeed, the the district attorney now is meeting him. i hope he makes his own and comes to the same judgment. but my question actually relates a little bit to what you just said actually quite a bit, because it involves michael cohen. i based i haven't read your book, but based on it and i'm sure there's a lot detail that you haven't covered in the book, but it sounded as though the only really, truly incriminating statement that would have been shown trumps responsibility here was from michael cohen, where he said, i have to get the statements to match the needs because you're going to get accountants, you're going to get expert witnesses, you know, on both sides. they're going to say, oh, yeah, this is all fine. this was nothing wrong unless you get something beyond that. and you got it from michael cohen, who was. so is it was there nobody other than michael? we had we plenty beyond that. we would not have gone i would not have wanted to go forward if

the only evidence connecting donald trump to the falsification of the financial statements was michael cohen's testimony. but i get into some of it in the book. some of i couldn't get into because it was protected by grand jury tests that were by grand jury secrecy. but in my judgment, there was plenty of evidence that would tie donald trump to the preparation of the financial statements. and if you do buy the book, you can look at a paragraph, page 223 that talks about one of the things some of the things i have said to a jury, if were trying to convince a jury that trump was, in fact, responsible for these financial settlements more than just to 23, it should go on for a few. no, that was a paragraph. so in the final minute or two here, help us understand your

perspective on all of the lingering investigations of former trump. there is this civil lawsuit in new york. there's ongoing manhattan district attorney investigation. there the january six. there's the congressional investigation in georgia, fannie willies, the district attorney in fulton county, continuing to investigate the. there's the records case of former trump and how he handled classified material. there's the grand jury, an alternative and that scheme. there's a grand jury on january six and a possible conspiracy to overturn election. when you look at that entire landscape complicated many people with busy lives to follow all of the ins and outs of all of these different investigations every day, even you watch a lot of cable news and read a lot of books. you're a former federal prosecutor. you've been in the belly of the beast in the manhattan d.a. in your closing remarks here. help us help our audience.

and me, too, understand what you see and what you're paying attention to right now. i see, in terms of the doj a serious investigation, it's taking a long time, but from one can see from the outside, which frankly is little when it comes to an investigation like this, it looks like a serious and substantial investigation. i think the people are acting in good faith. i have no reason. certainly to question the bona fides of of merrick garland or jack smith and how it will end is impossible for me or anybody to say who's not in the department of justice. part of the reason, though, i, i wrote the book is to point out a number of things. first, it's difficult to to do

cases like this. one of the reasons it's difficult because no matter what you do, you will be accused of making a political decision. if you act, it's political. it's an act of political warfare. if you don't act, it's a it's an of political warfare. and i've seen in editorials urging prosecutors to stay there hand with respect to donald trump because indicting him would give him a platform, allow him to become a martyr and we should just let him slink back my under the rock from which he came. i a problem with that because i don't think the political repercussions of a prosecution are what prosecutors ought to think what they ought to think about is was a crime committed the person guilty. they ought to think whether the evidence is legally sufficient to establish guilt. they ought to think whether they

have a reasonable possibility of success if they go forward, they ought to weigh up the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, because that's what we do. that's what i did for years in deciding on other cases. that's how you have to approach donald trump, i believe. and i also, from what i know of the facts from the public reporting that if that's the analysis that used, he will be charged mark pomerantz author of the people versus donald trump, former federal prosecutor, former special assistant district attorney, new york county. thank you very much for joining here on politics and prose. thank you to politics and right here and for everyone on c-span. we appreciate it. but go back to the registers. the signing line will start right behind me. and please remember to flip your chairs and

good evening. i'm jason kelly. i'm interim director of the galvin in journalism ethics and democracy. and i'm excited to welcome you all to