If Trump was ‘Joe Blow from Kokomo,’ he would have been charged with crimes, former New York prosecutor says

If Trump had been Joe Blow from Kokomo, we would have indicted him without a big debate, according to a former special New York prosecutor.

Mark Pomerantz, the former special prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, believes that Donald Trump was guilty and that there was enough evidence to convict him.

It is toxic to have people believe that the criminal justice system can't hold people accountable if they have a lot of money and power.

He said that the rule of law should encompass the rich and poor alike.

Pomerantz questioned why Donald Trump wasn't charged with a crime in New York. John Coffee Jr. is a law school professor at Columbia University.

Judge Rakoff was a part of the interview.

The interview was Pomerantz's first since he and Carey Dunne resigned from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office over the decision by the district attorney not to seek a grand jury.

The rule of law is for everyone, and that is what I believed, according to Pomerantz.

He said that if the defendants had not been Donald Trump or Joe Blow, the case would have been thrown out.

There is a risk that you will be charged with a crime if you give a false financial statement to a bank.

The suspected practice of reporting different valuations for the same real estate assets in order to maximize financial benefits in the form of tax breaks, insurance premium reductions was being investigated by the district attorney.

The Trump Organization is being investigated by the New York state attorney general.

Pomerantz said in the interview that they anticipated the ability to get testimony that the loans wouldn't have been made without Donald Trump's personal financial statements.

The company and Trump have not been found guilty of wrongdoing.

Ronald Fischetti did not reply to the request for comment. Fischetti told CNBC that he was surprised and disappointed by the comments that were made by Pomerantz.

The office of Bragg did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The investigation of Trump began under Cyrus Vance Jr., who was the district attorney at the time.

At the time, Pomerantz was retired from private legal practice. The federal prosecutor's office in Manhattan has a criminal division headed by Pomerantz.

The investigation of a former president, who had millions of supporters and also millions of people who hated this guts, was more dramatic, more exciting, and complicated than the one I was thinking about.

Maybe I could make a difference by focusing on the investigation. He went to work after agreeing to get involved.

Last year, a 15-count indictment was obtained against the Trump Organization and its CFO, Allen Weisselberg, for an alleged scheme to illegally avoid taxes on compensation to the CFO and other executives of the company. The defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Bragg became the new leader in January after Vance decided not to run for reelection in 2020.

Bragg told Pomerantz and Dunne that he had doubts about indicting Trump and that they had to resign.

The case would be closed, but we weren't told about it. The investigation would go on. We were told that an indictment wouldn't be allowed on the current state of the record.

That leads to the question of what will change. There was a good chance that things would change. "Pormerantz said that." There was no expectation that the facts would change much in the foreseeable future.

He said that he didn't want to be part of an effort that would lead to a different outcome in the future.

The resignation letter was made public in March.

The lawyer said that he and his team had no doubt that Trump had committed crimes, and that Bragg's decision not to prosecute at the time meant that he would not be held accountable for his crimes.

Pomerantz said in the interview that people are charged with that crime every day in the US.

It was necessary to charge the case to vindicate the rule of law. The risk of loss can be quantified in a different way. Could we have lost the case. The case could have ended in defeat. Sometimes it's better to bring a case and risk losing it than not to do so.

After he resigned, Pomerantz found out that Bragg must have been corrupt to decide not to charge Trump.

I think that is ridiculous. There was absolutely no evidence of corruption here. Pomerantz disagreed with the decision.

The fact that people are questioning the integrity of the district attorney is a reflection of the fact that people don't trust the rule of law.