Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted former President Donald J. Trump, agreed on Friday to testify before Congress as Republicans seek to discredit Mr. Trump’s conviction. But Mr. Bragg suggested his testimony would need to wait until after Mr. Trump is sentenced next month.
Mr. Bragg, who had previously resisted congressional involvement in the case, indicated his willingness to testify in a letter to Representative Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee. Mr. Bragg’s office said the district attorney wanted to speak first with House Republicans to “better understand the scope and purpose of the proposed hearing.”
After Mr. Trump’s May 30 conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Mr. Jordan called for a hearing on June 13 that he said would examine what he called politically motivated prosecutions of federal officials by state and local prosecutors, “in particular the recent political prosecution of President Donald Trump by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.”
In addition to Mr. Bragg’s testimony, Mr. Jordan, who also leads a subcommittee investigating what Republicans call the “weaponization of government,” is seeking the testimony of one of the prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, who helped lead the case against Mr. Trump.
“This office is committed to voluntary cooperation,” Leslie B. Dubeck, the Manhattan district attorney’s general counsel, wrote to Mr. Jordan on Friday. “That cooperation includes making the district attorney available to provide testimony on behalf of the office at an agreed-upon date.”
Ms. Dubeck’s letter also said the office would be “evaluating the propriety” of allowing Mr. Colangelo to testify publicly about the investigation. But the June date Mr. Jordan had set, she wrote, presented scheduling conflicts.
Although Mr. Trump’s seven-week trial is over — and he is now the first U.S. president to become a felon — several important issues still loom over the case. Mr. Trump, who, a jury found, falsified business records to cover up a potential sex scandal, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11. He has also asked that the judge in case, Juan Merchan, drop a gag order against him.
“The trial court and reviewing appellate courts have issued numerous orders for the purpose of protecting the fair administration of justice in People v. Trump, and to participate in a public hearing at this time would be potentially detrimental to those efforts,” Ms. Dubeck wrote.
Republicans are expected to attack Mr. Colangelo, whom they have portrayed 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 to target the former president.
It is unclear whether Mr. Bragg’s response will satisfy Mr. Jordan, one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest congressional allies and a leader of the Republican effort to undercut the case against the former president.
A spokesman for Mr. Jordan said he was considering how to respond and that “everything is on the table.”
Using his chairmanship as a cudgel, Mr. Jordan has also tried to intercede on Mr. Trump’s behalf in several other cases against the former president. He is pushing to block federal funding for law enforcement officers involved in any case against Mr. Trump, including “zeroing out” funding for Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Mr. Bragg, the first prosecutor to indict Mr. Trump, who still faces criminal cases in Georgia, Florida and Washington, D.C., was already a favorite target on the political right. Mr. Trump has assailed Mr. Bragg, who is Black, as a “racist” and has falsely claimed the district attorney is a tool of President Biden.
Mr. Bragg has not publicly responded to the attacks, nor has he granted interviews in the wake of the verdict. Mr. Bragg, a low-key career prosecutor, might be out of his element under the glare of a congressional grilling.
But he is a deliberative pragmatist, and was most likely hesitant to flout the request altogether. If he had declined to testify, Mr. Jordan could have subpoenaed him and, ultimately, sought to hold him in contempt, a rebuke that a prosecutor would be loath to incur.
This is not Mr. Bragg’s first run-in with Mr. Jordan, who previously clashed with the Manhattan district attorney’s office after demanding that a former prosecutor testify under subpoena.
Mr. Bragg sued to try to block the testimony, accusing Mr. Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on the prosecution of Mr. Trump and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” the district attorney’s office.
But the judiciary committee prevailed. The former prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, was forced to appear at a deposition, but he declined to answer questions, citing several privileges including his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
After a jury of 12 New Yorkers convicted Mr. Trump, Mr. Jordan called the verdict “a travesty of justice.” In his letter last week seeking Mr. Bragg’s testimony, the congressman called the case a “political prosecution.”
The case stemmed from a hush-money deal with a porn star, Stormy Daniels, that was struck during the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump’s fixer at the time, Michael D. Cohen, paid Ms. Daniels $130,000 to keep quiet about her story of a sexual encounter with Mr. Trump that he has denied.
When Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen from the White House, the jury found, he falsified records to disguise the nature of the payment to Mr. Cohen.