Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who won conviction of former President Donald J. Trump on 34 felony counts, plans to testify before Congress next month, one day after Mr. Trump is scheduled to be sentenced.
Mr. Bragg will undoubtedly face a grilling from House Republicans, who have rallied behind Mr. Trump since his conviction last month of falsifying business records to cover up a potential sex scandal. G.O.P. lawmakers have perpetuated his false narrative that President Biden ordered his prosecution. Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee and is a close ally of Mr. Trump, summoned Mr. Bragg to answer the G.O.P.’s accusations.
“It undermines the rule of law to spread dangerous misinformation, baseless claims and conspiracy theories following the jury’s return of a full-count felony conviction in People v. Trump,” Mr. Bragg’s office said in a statement. “Nonetheless, we respect our government institutions and plan to appear voluntarily before the subcommittee.”
Mr. Bragg previously suggested his testimony would need to wait until after Mr. Trump is sentenced next month.
House Republicans have promised to use every congressional tool at their disposal to avenge their party’s leader, including holding hearings, cutting funds to prosecutors’ offices and passing legislation to help the former president.
In addition to questioning Mr. Bragg, Mr. Jordan, who leads a subcommittee investigating what Republicans call the “weaponization of government,” will also hear the testimony of one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, who helped lead the case against Mr. Trump.
Republicans have portrayed Mr. Colangelo as a political actor who left the Justice Department to target Mr. Trump in a state-level prosecution. They have suggested Mr. Colangelo’s involvement in the case is evidence of improper coordination by anti-Trump forces at different levels of government.
But the Justice Department denied there was any coordination regarding the prosecution. In a letter to Mr. Jordan, obtained by The New York Times, the agency condemned the allegation as a conspiracy theory.
Carlos Felipe Uriarte, an assistant attorney general, wrote that federal prosecutors had searched their files and could find no communications between the Justice Department and Mr. Colangelo or any other member of Bragg’s office concerning the prosecution of Mr. Trump.
“The department does not generally make extensive efforts to rebut conspiratorial speculation, including to avoid the risk of lending it credibility,” Mr. Uriarte wrote to Mr. Jordan. “However, consistent with the attorney general’s commitment to transparency, the department has taken extraordinary steps to confirm what was already clear: There is no basis for these false claims.”
A jury of New Yorkers convicted Mr. Trump last month, finding he had falsified business records to cover up a potential scandal that threatened his 2016 election campaign. The scandal centered on a hush-money payment to the porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Mr. Trump, who faces anything from probation to four years in prison, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. Mr. Bragg and Mr. Colangelo are scheduled to testify before Congress on July 12.
The conviction made Mr. Trump, who is seeking to return to office, the first U.S. president to become a felon. He also faces criminal prosecutions in Washington and Georgia over his effort to subvert the 2020 election, and in Florida, where he is accused of mishandling classified documents.
