Alvin Bragg, the New York City district attorney who gained notoriety by apprehending Donald Trump, waxed ecstatic about his endeavor to remove the former leader from office. No one is above the law in Manhattan, the prosecutor added, the “business capital of the world.”
Following Trump’s arraignment on 34 criminal counts last week, Bragg told reporters, “We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.” No amount of wealth or influence can alter this enduring American value.
Bragg claims that the pursuit of fair justice within the law was the driving force for the patriotic choice to charge Trump. Never mind that Joe Biden received 86.8% of the vote in the county where Bragg ran for office by promising to prosecute the ex-president who was despised by the locals. And forget about the fact that George Soros, a millionaire activist and the largest fundraiser to Democratic Party candidates and organizations, supported a substantial portion of Bragg’s 2021 campaign for the Manhattan District Attorney position.
Yes, Bragg claims that his case is morally and legally correct. The charges he brought are so legally questionable, though, that only a Manhattan jury of Trump haters may believe him, according to a careful examination of the indictment. He is accusing Trump of manipulating business records six years ago, and by making the allegations felonies, he is avoiding the two-year statute of limitations on such crimes. He is arguing that the crimes were committed to hide violations of election laws while Trump was running for president in 2016 in order to qualify for that under New York’s criminal code.
These alleged transgressions were the result of a purported hush-money payment to a porn star who claimed to have slept with Trump. On its face, the payment was lawful, but if it could be shown that it was made only to support Trump’s candidacy, it would go above the permitted amount for a political contribution. At the time, both the Federal Election Commission and the US Department of Justice investigated the situation but concluded there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a lawsuit against Trump.
It would be difficult to claim that Bragg is motivated by the interests of justice, even if you give him the benefit of the doubt with regard to his motivations for coming after Trump — especially given that the 2024 election is just around the corner and the former president is currently polling as the top Republican candidate. For starters, Bragg displays little interest in looking into the media leaks of information regarding Trump’s trial, which are itself illegal under New York law.
Another reason is that the city is becoming more and more lawless due to his approach to justice. As soon as he became the district attorney in January 2022, Bragg issued his first memo ordering the prosecution to stop locking up so many criminals and to reduce charges for offenses like drug dealing and armed robbery. Additionally, he instructed his subordinates to recommend sentences that address racial inequities in incarceration, which would imply that the criminal’s punishment should be at least partially based on his or her skin tone.
In contrast to the Trump accusations, which were escalated to felonies, 52% of the criminal cases sent to Bragg’s office during his first year as DA were lowered to misdemeanors. The prosecution lost over half of the criminal cases that Bragg’s office did take on.
Crime has increased in America’s largest city, which is also the world’s economic hub, where many laws are only sparingly or never implemented. Car thefts have increased by 16 percent. According to police statistics, there were more than 2,000 felony assaults perpetrated in January alone, an increase of 15% from a year prior.
Self-defense is the one area in which Bragg seems to be very strict, aside from Republican presidential contenders. Take the example of Moussa Diarra, a parking garage attendant from Manhattan, who discovered himself chained to his bed when he woke up in a hospital earlier this month. A suspected vehicle burglar shot the 57-year-old twice. As the garage attendant struggled for his life, the suspect was also shot during a struggle for his weapon.
Diarra reportedly sobbed to his supervisor about his plight and said, “I got bullets in me, and I’m chained to a hospital bed, but I didn’t do anything wrong.” He was accused of trying to shoot the alleged burglar, who was a career criminal with more than 20 arrests on his credit, and illegally possessing a firearm—the same firearm that was used in the shooting.
In response to widespread concern over the situation, the charges against Diarra were later dropped, “pending further investigation.” Diarra was forced to seek an attorney, who said that the reason his client was initially accused was because the police hadn’t had enough time to determine how the two men ended up being shot. Police, however, asserted that the DA’s office ordered the garage worker’s detention and formal charges.
This might be thought of as an anomaly or just as a bad situation for Diarra. He may have been restrained to his hospital bed by handcuffs because it took authorities some time to realize that he was a hero rather than a perpetrator, and charging him was merely a stopgap measure. If Bragg didn’t have a history of seeking to penalize those who protect themselves, that could be believable.
Before Diarra, there was Jose Alba, a 61-year-old Dominican bodega proprietor who was attacked by a 35-year-old black ex-con behind the counter of his Harlem shop last July. Alba battled for his life as the onslaught intensified, stabbing the younger guy to death after sitting impassively and pleading with the attacker, allegedly stating “Papa, I don’t want a problem.” While fighting off the attacker, Alba is seen on surveillance footage being stabbed by the attacker’s girlfriend.
Alba was detained at the notorious Rikers Island jail after being charged with murder, where it is said that he was not even given the required care for his stab wounds. His first bail amount was $250,000. Weeks later, Bragg ultimately dropped the charges, but only after widespread criticism, including claims by the mayor of New York City and the commissioner of the New York Police Department that Alba had definitely acted in self-defense. The girlfriend who stabbed Alba wasn’t charged by the DA.
In another case, Bragg failed to uphold a promise he made during the campaign to drop the charges against Tracy McCarter, a nurse who reportedly killed her abusive husband by stabbing him. In other instances, he has reduced charges against repeat offenders. One such man, who had nearly 90 arrests on his record, was released on $1 bond after being apprehended last month for two suspected robberies that allegedly occurred on the same day.
Bragg has defended his actions by saying that it is necessary to focus on violent crime in order to free up scarce resources. Yet violent criminals have been released without bond while awaiting trial under his watch, at least those who weren’t acting in self-defense. A man who had been imprisoned for raping a teenager received a beautiful plea agreement from the district attorney that required him to serve only 30 days in jail. However, while he was out on bail and awaiting sentencing, he sexually attacked five additional people.
Despite limited resources and a survey indicating that 40% of office workers in New York City are considering moving elsewhere due to crime worries, Bragg has found time to pursue a political foe. He is doing this in a case involving seven-year-old claims that the more pertinent authorities, those who oversee federal elections, determined were not worth investigating.
Whatever the case may be, there is no real justice being served in Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, nor is there equal application of the law. The practice of wrongful legal activism is not unique to New York. Around 70 attorneys are said to have won district attorney elections around the US with Soros’ assistance. By adjusting their prosecutorial tactics to basically legalize some forms of crime and reward some criminal types, these social justice warriors have rendered their cities less safe and more prejudiced.
According to MSNBC political analyst Peter Beinart, who is a leftist, the prosecution of Trump is being driven by a coalition of groups that have historically been the targets of discrimination, including black people, Jews, and “LGBT folks,” who have “come together to push back against the white Christian nationalist assault on American democracy.”
Yes, the groups who feel they have been victimized unfairly are working together to remove the leading Republican presidential candidate from the race for president in 2024 because they care so much about preserving democracy. Because, you know, democracy, they would adore being able to choose the candidates that voters may vote for.
Some foreign leaders have been honest enough to say the first arrest of a former US head of state is a clown show. For instance, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, said: “Imagine if this happened in any other country, when a government detained the primary opposition candidate. Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being investigated. The US can no longer utilize ‘democracy’ as a tool of foreign policy.
