WASHINGTON (AP) — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is scheduled to testify before Congress on July 12, a day after former President Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money trial, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Bragg is set to appear before the House Select Committee on weaponization alongside Matthew Colangelo, the former high-ranking Justice Department official hired by Bragg in 2022 to lead the Trump investigation. The date was confirmed to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the negotiations who was granted anonymity to disclose a date not yet made public.
Bragg and Colangelo will face what’s likely to be a hostile, Republican-controlled hearing where the chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio has accused both men of having conducted a “political prosecution” in the case against the former president.
Trump was convicted last month of falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn actor during the 2016 presidential campaign and is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. Before then, prosecutors will be making recommendations to a judge about what kind of punishment Trump deserves.
Bragg, a Democrat, sued Jordan last year, seeking to halt a House Judiciary Committee inquiry into Trump’s indictment. He later agreed to let the Republican-led committee question ex-prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, who once oversaw the investigation but left the job after clashing with Bragg over the direction of the case.
Soon after Trump’s April 2023 arraignment, Jordan took the Judiciary Committee on the road for a field hearing near Bragg’s offices to examine what he decried as the Democrat’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policies. Democrats said the hearing was a partisan stunt aimed at amplifying conservative anger at Bragg.
Bragg, a former civil rights lawyer and law professor, is in his first term as Manhattan’s district attorney. He inherited the Trump investigation when he took office in 2021. He oversaw the prosecution of Trump’s company in an unrelated tax fraud case before moving to indict Trump last year.
He and Colangelo previously worked together on Trump-related matters at the New York attorney general’s office. During the trial, Colangelo delivered the opening statement and questioned several witnesses including former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.
