from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> next, formal federal prosecutor mark pomerantz talking about his investigation into former president donald trump and the trump organization which he writes about in a newly released book. the discussion is just one hour.

>> welcome. this evening, our guest will talk about his new book, the people versus donald trump, in this riveting work of nonfiction tells the story of this unprecedented investigation and why he believes donald trump should be prosecuted and what we can learn about the nature of justice in america from this extraordinary case. mark will be in conversation with robert, robert is the chief election and campaign correspondent for cbs news, where he covers national politics and american democracy.

let us welcome mark pomerantz. >> thank you very much. it is great to be here. thank you for hosting this conversation, the c-span audience, and everyone in the neighborhood, and mark, thank you for being here to discuss your new book, an in-depth look at this ongoing investigation of former president donald trump. before we dig into that investigation you participated in, take me through your journey briefly from university of michigan law school to that call in december of 2020 to come aboard the manhattan d.a.'s office. mark: i will try to confine that story. there were a lot of stops along the way. after graduating law school, i clerked for a federal district judge in new york city and went on to be a law clerk at the

united states supreme court, and after that became an assistant united states attorney in the southern district of new york and served for four years, then left as chief of appeals. i taught for a few years at columbia law school ben started a small criminal defense boutique -- and then started a small criminal defense boutique with a lawyer, and as things turned out, he became did person turning to donald j. trump. and was representing 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 ball 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 firms, but went

back to the u.s. 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 did not want to sit in conference rooms anymore without the sun and listening to questions that were not elegantly answered by my client and not elegantly put by the government, so i decided to retire. i was retired when i got the call. robert: it was a michael corleone moment. you think you're out, but you are pulled back in.

why were you pulled back in? for those of us just starting to read the book or finishing it, help us to understand why a former federal prosecutor is brought on by the manhattan d.a.'s office to investigate violations of state law? mark: well, i think, first, i can't say for sure because i did not ask that question. i did not protest when i got the call. i thought 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 was delighted to do it. i had had a long background in handling financial crimes on both sides as prosecutor and defense lawyer. i had handled organized crime cases as a prosecutor and defense attorney, and i am only assuming that combination of background and experience was

attractive to cy vance, but again, i did not cross-examine him when he asked. i was absolutely delighted to work. robert: so you come into the manhattan d.a.'s office working with cy vance and other attorneys and you are looking at the trump organization, how trump has articulated his financial profile in recent decades. tell me about one of the main characters -- over the years, when i would go to trump tower to report on mr. trump, allen weisselberg. mark: allen weisselberg, we knew him from the work that had been done in the reporting that had been done was donald trump's right-hand man. you saw him as kind of a brooding omnipresence in many photographs of donald trump. we knew he had worked not only

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

induced to cooperate, would be a source of a lot of information. robert: when you step back and look at all the ongoing investigations of former president trump, there is the january 6 committee, the ongoing grand jury justice department investigations of january 6, and so many others, the newark state investigation, but in the manhattan d.a. office, 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 is a small company, so what were the challenges in that endeavor from the start when you come into the office? mark: well, the challenges and the reason it was difficult came from a number of different reasons. one is unlike a large company like a google or pfizer, the

trump organization to not cooperate with a law enforcement investigation at all ever. there were no documents that were supplied on a voluntary basis. if you wanted something, it had to be dragged out of the company. if you wanted to speak to a company employee, they were not brought in whether they had criminal exposure are not, they had to be subpoenaed into a grand jury, and so at every step along the wages the gathering of information was difficult, and indeed it took 18 months -- this was before i joined the investigation -- it took 18 months and two trips to the u.s. supreme court to get donald trump's tax returns and basic accounting information. and so, just getting the information, the documentary information, was difficult, and it was clear that within the trump organization that donald

trump ran the organization with an iron hand, and people were not going to cooperate without his blessing and he was not going to give his blessing, it was a circumstance where every fact had to be dragged out. robert: years ago right before trump announced his 2016 campaign, i was writing for the washington post and trump came to the post and he had a two -page document about his finances. it was not a formal document in any way. 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? he says, trust me, i know. i said, ok, there is no real proof. he made these grand statements about his work. saying that to a reporter is one thing is about what is so interesting about this book is you focus on something called s

ofgc's. that is so important in understanding how you as an investigator as a lawyer looked at his financial statements and saw possible crime. mark: sure. the statement of financial condition, sofc's, and we had benefited from the fact-finding by the attorney general and the facts that found their way into a civil complaint that was filed, which is over 200 pages long and chock full of evidence related 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 providence. so 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. that is common practice in the industry and end sections of the bank where he did business, primarily with deutsche bank. so trump had to provide annual financial statements under bank policy. they were not, by 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 waved it in front of you, that indicated his personal brand, the value of his name was i think $3.5 billion, and one of the interesting factoids we discovered was that there was no update on that letter, and i spoke to michael cohen at one point about the letter and michael cohen explained there is no date on the letter because he wants to be able to use the

letter whenever he wants to come under whatever circumstances he wants to, and there is no need to bring it current. it is an evergreen brand letter that gives them $3.5 billion to tack onto his financial statements for political purposes and so on. for banks, you can't use brand value. they did not attribute much meaning to a letter that says and here is another $3.5 billion. they wanted a regular financial statement prepared by an outside accounting firm, and that is what they got. the problem was was the accounting firm put out the financial statements on its letterhead, it did so on the basis of representations and warranties they got from donald trump in the trump organization that the numbers were compiled with some exceptions pursuant to generally accepted accounting

principles, and that no information was withheld from the auditors, and that the numbers provided fairly presented trump's financial statements. all of the statements were provided trump signed guarantees at the bank, signed representations and compliant certificates vouching for the accuracy of the financial statements, but the financial statements were phony, for want of a better word. robert: what was your moment where you said to yourself i see a case here? mark: it started with information received from the new york attorney general's office, and this is the sequence of events as recounted in the book, and over the course of sometime, it became apparent that it is not one asset or one year that is overstated, and the

magnitude of the overstatement, depending on the asset, was massive. his apartment was valued for several years and over $300 million 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 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 is one value for one asset, and the financial statements were permeated by that kind of deception, but the moment came early on when we were speaking to michael 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 michael cohen told us when we spoke to him was that he had been in conversations directly with trump and allen weisselberg 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, that the values for the assets were reverse engineered according to the net worth target, which is not the way you're supposed to do it. robert: what is the crime? fraud? if you had moved ahead with an indictment, what with the charge have been? mark: filing false business instruments. the financial statement -- 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 hear the documents were given to the bank that became business records of the bank. the certifications were accompanied by the financial statements, and so this certifications 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 essentially the crime was you can't lie to a bank to get loans. this is not the only crime you are investigated. you mentioned michael cohen, a longtime advisor, fixer/lawyer in trump's orbit. you call at the zombie case in the book. explain that. while you were looking into the financial statements of a year

investigating the zombie case and the role of michael cohen. mark: sure. zombie case we called at a zombie case at times because it was a theory of prosecution and some potential crimes that were investigated, put aside because of legal or factual problems,, investigated, so they were exhumed, and put aside for variety of reasons, re-examined yet again, and it kept returning from the grave so often that we started referring to it as the zombie theory. what it involved was the concealment of the reimbursement to michael cohen of the hush money he had paid to stormy daniels. most people who have followed the trump saga recall that it became public years ago, that michael cohen on trump's behalf

had paid 100 $30,000 to stormy daniels and her lawyer right before the election in 2016 and at a time when she was threatening to expose her allegation she had an affair with donald trump. robert: i don't mean to interrupt, but you use the word threat. that is key to your understanding of the zombie case because you believe trump was being threatened by stormy daniels and the payment in some way was money laundering? mark: well, the first thing i looked at when i looked at these facts shortly after working on the case was one of their crime -- what other crimes might be involved in the payment of the hush money and the disguise of the reimbursement. the reimbursement took place in

a disguise fashion. first of all, i back up, i want to apologize for some legal background, but it is not a crime to pay hush money. it is not a crime to be reimbursed for paying hush money if you are the payer's lawyer. if michael cohen had received from donald trump that said in reimbursement for the hush money , that would've changed the whole legal landscape, but that is when -- not what happened, the reimbursement was disguise. michael cohen got a home equity loan and paid the money after getting the home equity loan and got reimbursed over a 12-month period during 2017 while donald trump was in the white house. at >> that crime is a misdemeanor

unless it is committed in an attempt to conceal another crime. we had to look for another crime. one of the other crimes we looked at was might it be money laundering? and to be money laundering, money has to be the proceeds of illegal activity. we started looking at 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 did not pan out and we were left with a case where we could bring misdemeanor charges for falsifying the business records. and it may be -- it raises a new issue of law, maybe a felony if the expenses, if the business records were created with the attempt to conceal the federal election law violation to which

michael cohen pleaded guilty. without getting into the details and legal issues, whether that federal crime counts under state law, under new york state law, to make the misdemeanors a felony is an open question. so it created the risk that if we charge the case the charge will be reduced to a felony. when we first looked at this, we were investigating other felonies. we did not 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 status. it's a bit laborious. host: so you're working in at the manhattan d.a. office and you have a question about how to formulate an indictment, but you're moving toward it. then as the book documents, cyrus, the manhattan district

attorney, decides to leave. your world is upended as an investigator, as you write in the book. a new district attorney comes in, alvin bragg. things seem to fall apart. in terms of your view of it. mr. pomerantz: yes and let me comment on some of the way stations that you mentioned. their tenure ended at the end of 2021. we knew as early as march of 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 they were d.a. and then you would not have to deal with whatever those views might be of an incoming administration? the short answer to that question is we were

working as fast and as hard as we could. we got the accounting records that became the basis of the potential prosecution toward the end of february 2021. by the end of june, 2021, we had charged the trump organization and allen weisselberg with tax offenses related to weisselberg's free apartments, cars, tuition for his grandchildren and so on. that took some time. we then plunged into the financial statements and as i described 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 are dealing with years of financial statements, dozens of assets. and the method of valuation changed from asset to asset and year-to-year. so understanding the complexities of the financial

statements took months. as we got toward the end of his 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 is no doubt that the da wanted to make the decision and would have liked to have seen charges and charges were appropriate during his tenure. i have seen it written that cy dragged his feet so that the case would not be made. that could not be further from the truth. we just could not get it done. we finally reached the point where we thought we were in a position to make a charging decision and to move forward with the work that is necessary to return charges, working the grand jury, drafting indictments and so on. right around the end of 2021.

and then a new district attorney arrived. and foolishly perhaps in retrospect, as we were working along at the end of 2021, we did not foresee -- i did not foresee that the change of administration would slow us down, would prevent the case from moving forward. and i do not think from the conversations that we had that cyrus vance thought that that was going to happen. we all understood of course that the new regime would have two that the case -- to vet the case. the new district attorney would have to make the decision that he was comfortable with the case and proceed. and it did not quite happen the way that we hoped or anticipated. host: and you resigned eventually? mr. pomerantz: eventually, after it became clear that the

district attorney was not going to authorize the prosecution on the record we had developed. host: here is what district attorney bragg has said on the record in recent days in a quote to reporters. we have an active ongoing investigation so i am constrained from what i can say but here is what i can say, i bring hard cases when they are ready. i came to the same conclusion that multiple senior prosecutors in my office independently came to and that was that mark pomerantz's case simply was not ready. your response? mr. pomerantz: well, i think it was ready, but apart from that dispute, which is a fact about which nobody should really care, what you should care about is that it has been a year since that time. if the case was not ready in january 2022, here we are in

february 2023. what has been done to make the case ready? when is it going to be ready? and -- host: do you believe the manhattan district attorney's office indict donald trump? mr. pomerantz: i am a lowe's to predict --loathe to predicted i cannot speak for the manhattan d.a., it would be unfair to try to do that. i would be personally surprised if the financial statement case were indicted, because i just have not seen from the public reporting the kind of forward motion and investigative steps that one might expect if that case were getting ready to indict. but the zombie case, the payment of -- the reimbursement of the hush-money payments through false business records, that case may well get made. it is certainly one that in the last month, there has 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 the da. host: he's been showing up on television with lenny davis at his side. mr. pomerantz: do not get between michael cohen and the camera. but having said that, when it came to describing the circumstances that we were investigating -- look, michael was cooperative. he is a peculiar cooperating witness, because he did not have a sword hanging 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 do not have. but he was cooperating without the customary expectation of leniency that

most cooperators have. host: is a longtime observer of michael cohen as a reporter, i would venture based on my reporting that if you have seen michael and donald trump interacting up close, you are not surprised about the cooperation. i will leave it at that. final question before we get to the q&a. if you would like to ask a question, lined up and ask in the microphone which is over here. before we get to the q and a, you can start lining up if you would like. you say something very interesting in the book. quote nevertheless the feds have not gone it 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, because i have been spending a lot of time reporting on the grand jury's and donald trump and the federal investigation of donald trump and you are right. it appears the financial aspects of the trump organization is not part of the scope of their

inquiry. based at least on what we know so far. what can you tell us about that decision on the federal level as a former prosecutor? mr. pomerantz: i really cannot shed much light on that. i described in the book the reasons, both relating to the substantive law, procedural law, federal 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 department of justice. the statutes are 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 did not undertake that investigation, at least once donald trump was no longer president of the united states, i do not know. now before he lost the reelection, one could say i

suppose why carry forward with the investigation under department of justice policy? he cannot be indicted as a sitting president. i am not sure that that axley is lack of an investigation -- that that explains the lack of an investigation. the da was investigating donald trump when he was a sitting president and had all of the litigation. and continued to investigate and would have had the same issues i think trying to bring a criminal case against a sitting president as the doj had, but why the investigation did not get jumpstarted on the federal level at least once trump lost the election and was no longer president i do not know. it is possible i suppose that the feds were deferring to the work that was being done by the manhattan d.a. and the state attorney general, but if the

feds want to do something, they do not usually wait for state authorities to finish it. it really works the other way. so i just cannot answer that question. it is a question that is worth asking. host: does anyone have a question? you can line up at the microphone as we wait for someone to come over and ask a question. i will ask a question that has been raised since the book has been published. let's say the manhattan district attorney's office does move forward with an indictment. the microphone is over here. how would this book, kate such an indictment -- complicate this indictment if at all? mr. pomerantz: i thought about that when 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 that i do not want to do anything that would mess up a potential prosecution of donald trump. and i became satisfied that i

would not, because the facts underlying any potential prosecution, whether it is the zombie case or the financial statement case are out there in the public domain. the facts relating to the stormy daniels hush money payments and the reimbursement had been in the public domain for i think at least three or four years. michael cohen described them in his book, stormy daniels described them in her book. then she went on michael's podcast and spoke about it. those facts were -- became public in the federal prosecution of michael cohen and the reporting that was done by many people. and there were no secrets about that scenario that are contained in the book.

we brought the facts together, but it is not a circumstance where i was letting cats out of the bag. the cats were running free for quite some time. on the financial statement side, 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 of pages the details of why the financial statements were false, how they had been used with banks and insurance companies and other recipients. and indeed, she said here are the crimes that look committed. those were the crimes that we intended to bring. so the case that we had was out there. and public before my book, months before my book was published. host: seems to me that donald trump is getting away --

everybody is taking so long to get him. did he have any influence on district attorney the other prosecutors? i don't understand, is it just because he was president we are going to drag this out? i mean, if you look back at mueller's investigation, he did a thorough investigation. he laid out possible obstruction of justice charges, then he surprises us with saying we cannot indict the president, which he should have said at the beginning. but why when they came in -- excuse me. garland came in or anybody, why didn't they prosecute him for obstruction of justice charges? they seemed to let everything just go on by. mr. pomerantz: look, one of the points that i try to talk about in the book was that one of the

things that may happen that i thought deserved to be discussed, because i do not think it should be happening, is that when it comes to donald trump, there is a desire to have a perfect case. to not pull the trigger if there is any real shot of losing the case. not to act until the circumstances virtually compel you to act. and if that is the course that prosecutors follow, you end up with a different system of justice for donald trump than you do in the book joe blow from kokomo. somebody else on these same facts he was not the former president of the united states would be indicted in my view

very, very quickly. and you hear the expression that you do not shoot for the king unless you are sure you can kill the king. what is wrong with that in my view among other things is that when you are dealing with a would-be king, if you do not take 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 was to try and encourage discussion about how prosecutors will deal with cases like this. you have to in my judgment move quickly and decisively. that does not mean that you are not careful. you are supposed to be careful when you charge anyone with a crime. but what it does mean is that you cannot allow the concern for the repercussions or the concern about nailing down a certain

victory to paralyze you. host: can we get a question from someone else if you don't mind? i'm trying to be fair. >> i have concerns about federalization of the process. i guess my thought would be if your motivation for certain prosecution or certain investigations is political, you should not do it. i just got to say it out loud, do you think it met that test? mr. pomerantz: that's another topic i try to talk about at some length in the book. i do agree that the criminal justice system should not be politicized. you do not as a prosecutor, you do not bring political cases. because you want to serve a political end. they are not supposed to be acts

of political warfare. having said that, i am now speaking obviously as a private citizen exercising my first amendment rights. i am no longer speaking for the government. i can conclude that as a matter of my own political beliefs that it is important for prosecutors to act when they have legitimate cases. when they can bring their cases with adequate evidence under all of the procedures that we have in place to act fairly and legally. and having -- not inconsistent with prosecutors keeping politics aside, and i can tell you as we had our huddles in a manhattan office, there is not a moment that donald trump's politics came into the discussion. we were talking about the law,

witnesses, where to go next in the investigation. there was not a moment when even in a private conversation, people said you know, we really have to get this guy. because it's just not what prosecutors are supposed to do and we all knew that and it just did not happen. >> thank you so much for speaking out. i think one of the things that i as some have said and i have not understood enough, i think it is extremely important that you speak out, because the public we see the obstruction of justice, nothing happening. the fact that mueller did not investigate does not seem the financial aspect of the ties from trump to russia. and i listen to your comment on the more recent indictment of

the counterintelligence officer -- the head of counterintelligence who was also linked. and i've been surprised -- i was shocked that there is not more press coverage of this, because when you start to connect -- you know, you said dropping -- i love the expression of dancing through the raindrops of accountability. it is perfect. but you know, unless we start to get some answers to this thing and unless the press -- i'm going to speak to you now as well, starts asking all the questions. start asking these questions because we seem to be getting distracted by the idea that there is politicized asian of the doj and everything else, but that has not been borne out. it's a lack of action because of fear. otherwise there would be more explanation about what has happened.

so people see it. i think it is extreme 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 it has not been covered more in the press. mr. pomerantz: on the second part, i really cannot help you. on the first part, thank you for your comment. i will just say it is not easy. i knew when i wrote this book that i would get attacked. i knew that it would -- it broke norms. i knew that it is not something prosecutors, former prosecutors do. you do not tell tales out of school, you do not talk about what happened behind closed doors, you do not talk about evidence that is not been included in the charging instrument. and part of the reason i did that is because of a personal

view -- and those are good policies. and i followed those policies for my entire career. the reason i decided to do something different here frankly relates to something that i read in robert costo's book, peril. the last two words of the book which resonated with me are payroll remains. 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 existential -- [applause] mr. pomerantz: if you are dealing with an existential threat to the rule of law, there is an argument and perhaps even an investigation -- obligation to put aside the usual

credential practices, the norms. i did not break the law by writing a book, i was not going to do that. but when it came to violating norms, when it came to talking about things that prosecutors do not talk about, i thought in these truly extraordinary circumstances, it was the right thing to do and that's what i did. >> thank you. >> hello. to piggyback on what you are just saying about doj policy regarding speaking out -- and i appreciate an insiders perspective. >> reporters like it when people speak out. >> i am looking forward to trump's indictment. and i'm looking forward to a trump indictment as much as anybody, but it is one thing for stormy daniels and michael cohen to speak out publicly. it seems a little different even though you are a private citizen

that you had access to nonpublic information previously. do you think this opens a new avenue to a potential trump defense and an inevitable prosecution? do you think that he will single out your book is a way to protect himself -- as a way to protect himself? mr. pomerantz: he may talk about my book but the question becomes legally and ethically whether talking about these things in the book made it substantially more difficult for him to get a fair trial if he is indicted and if there is a prosecution. bearing in mind 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 is raised does the book somehow make prosecution of him more difficult, i have to say given literally the oceans of ink that have been spilled about donald trump over the last number of years, given the 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 of the stories that have been written and all of the segments on tv, it is my book that is going to make it difficult for him to get a fair trial. i just do not think there is any substance to that. i am confident -- i hope a lot of people buy the book, but i am confident that a year from whenever -- who knows if he will be indicted, when he will be indicted or when he will be tried, but i am confident that if that day should come, the judge will be able to find 12 jurors who have not read my book. [laughter] host: let's pause for a second and look at donald trump's statement in response to your book. trump's statement brings up this

point and it does raise the question about the use of michael cohen at as a key witness. here is donald trump's quote here. wow. the book put out by crooked hillary's attorney mark pomerantz is a hit at the district attorney. they quit in protest because i thought it was irresponsible and unfair to president trump. they thought they did not want to rely on a sleaze bag disbarred lawyer like michael cohen as a witness. they thought the case was terrible, a loser. put a fries -- put aside the phrasing, it raises the issue of michael cohen. is that the reason alvin bragg has had reservations about bringing the people versus donald trump? mr. pomerantz: that is impossible for me to say.

host: you wrote a memo to him and he put the memo in the book -- you put the memo in the book. tell us about the response to that? mr. pomerantz: i wrote several memos to him. one was perhaps inartfully phrased. i wrote it on the morning i was going to the hospital for surgery and it clearly did not sit well with the district attorney. i also wrote a memo urging him to consider as he was considering whether to authorize the case, i wrote a memo urging him to consider that some cases need to be brought even where there is substantial risk of loss because if they are not brought, the public will not have confidence in the enforcement of the rule of law. and i believe that. i gave him an example from my career where we had done that. but we did not have final

closing sit down where he shared the particular reasons why the case was not going to go forward. i have learned more from the statements in the media during the last week then i learned the entire time we were dealing with each other about what his thinking was sort reservations might have been. michael cohen, what i hope to happen and was glad to see if indeed the media reports are true that alvin bragg set down in person with michael. because i do not know how you make an appraisal of someone's credit ability, of how they will appear on the witness stand, whether they will be convincing without meeting the person and asking questions. one of the things that cyrus vance did during our

investigation was sit in on grand jury testimony and witness interviews. i can recall vividly a meeting that we had with michael cohen, where we took him through the stormy daniels facts and the reaction was with proper preparation and with proper questioning, michael cohen can be a convincing witness. i believe that to be the case. i believe he was telling the truth about the matters we spoke with him about and if indeed the district attorney now is meeting with him, i hope he makes his own appraisal and comes to the same judgment. >> my question actually relates a little bit to what you just said actually quite a bit. this involves michael cohen. i have not read your book, but is a lot more detail in the book. it sounds as though the only truly incriminating statement was from michael cohen where he

set i have to get the statements to match the banks needs. you're going to get accountants, expert witnesses on both sides that are going to say this is all fine. if there is nothing wrong. unless you get something beyond that and you got it from michael cohen, was there nobody else other than michael cohen? mr. pomerantz: we had plenty beyond that. 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 it i could not get into because it was protected by grand jury secrecy. but in my judgment, there was plenty of evidence that would tie donald trump to the preparation of a financial statement. and if you do buy the book, you can look at a paragraph on page 223 that talks about one of the

things that -- some of the things that i might have said to a jury if i were trying to convince a jury that donald trump was in fact responsible for these financial. >> i hope it's more than 223. it could go on. mr. pomerantz: that was a summary paragraph. host: in the final minute or two here, help us understand your perspective on all of the lingering investigations of former president donald trump. there is the civil lawsuit in new york. there is the ongoing manhattan district attorney investigation. there is the january 6, the congressional investigation. georgia, fanny willis, the district attorney in fulton county continuing to investigate the election. there is the record case of former president trump and how he handled classified material. there is the grand jury and alternate electors and that

scheme. there is a grand jury on janeway six and conspiracy to overturn an election. when you look at that landscape, to follow all of the ins and outs of all of these investigations every day, if you watch a lot of cable news and read a lot of books, you are a former federal prosecutor. you have been in the belly of the beast into the manhattan d.a.. in your closing remarks here, help our audience and me too understand what you see and what you are paying attention to right now. mr. pomerantz: i see in terms of the doj, serious investigation. it is taking a long time, but from what 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 people are acting in

good faith. i have no reason certainly to question the bona fides of merrick garland or jack smith. and how it will end is impossible for me or anybody else to say. who is not in the department of justice. part of the reason though i wrote the book is to point out a number of things. first, it is difficult to do cases like this. one of the reasons it is difficult is because no matter what you do, you will be accused of making a political decision. if you act, it is an active political warfare. if you do not act, it is an act of political warfare. i have seen editorials urging prosecutors to stay their 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 words, under the rock from which he came. i have a problem with that, because i do not think the political repercussions of a prosecution are what prosecutors ought to think about. what they ought to think about was a crime committed, was a person guilty? they ought to think about whether the evidence is sufficient to establish guilt. they ought to think about whether they have a reasonable possibly of success if they go forward. aggravating and mitigate circumstances, that is what we do, that is what i did four years in deciding on other cases. that is how you have to approach donald trump i believe. and i also believe from what i know of the facts a sickly from the public reporting, that if that is -- basically from the public reporting, if that is the facts he will be charged. host: mark pomerantz author of "the people vs. donald trump - an inside account", former

prosecutor, former district attorney for new york county. thank you for joining us at politics and prose. thank you to politics and prose and for everyone watching on c-span. we appreciate it. >> back at the registers, the signing line will s