Meet Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor going after Donald Trump
Sarah Westwood
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg found himself in the spotlight well before former President Donald Trump said Bragg’s office had prepared criminal charges for him.
Bragg’s progressive approach to criminal justice has for months put him at odds with even some Democrats, thrusting him into the center of a key 2022 midterm election contest and elevating him to a national mascot for liberal law enforcement.
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But Bragg could soon face an unprecedented level of scrutiny.
Republicans have honed in on Bragg’s record this week as they criticize a potential Trump indictment from the Manhattan DA as soon as Tuesday.
Some, like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), have focused on the $1 million that Bragg received from a political group backed by George Soros, a liberal donor who has championed dozens of progressive prosecutors around the country.
Others have noted how much Bragg dialed back the aggression of the DA’s office in going after many types of crime.
And still others have pointed to the extent to which Bragg has spoken out about pursuing Trump in the past, questioning whether the coming indictment can withstand claims of partisan bias.
In just a little more than a year on the job, Bragg has managed to court controversy on multiple fronts.
A memo he sent to prosecutors in his office immediately upon taking office last January generated so much outrage that he walked back some of his statements within weeks.
The “day one memo” outlined a list of crimes the DA’s office would no longer prosecute, including marijuana offenses, subway fare evasion, resisting arrest, and trespassing.
The memo also pushed prosecutors under Bragg to pursue shorter prison sentences wherever possible, let more people out of jail while awaiting trial, and cut down significantly the number of juveniles tried in adult court.
Roughly a month after coming under fire for his new policies, Bragg backtracked on some of the most controversial ones — most notably, the order that his team should not seek jail time for some categories of robbery and gun crimes — but left in place a framework that encouraged the most lenient treatment available for virtually all offenses.
His soft-on-crime approach put him at odds with Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who ran for reelection in New York last year against the backdrop of rising crime and increasing fears in New York City.
Hochul suggested she was open to removing Bragg from office if he did not reverse some of his day one memo policies last year, although her opponent, former GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin, hammered her throughout the race for not going far enough in her criticism of Bragg.
“This would be the first thing I would do, day one, as governor come January, is to fire the Manhattan district attorney,” Zeldin said last year.
Bragg stirred another national firestorm in July over his handling of a controversial case that drew widespread condemnation.
After a 35-year-old man leaped behind the counter of a bodega and attacked a 61-year-old shop worker last summer, the bodega worker grabbed a knife and fended off the attacker, killing him while sustaining stab wounds of his own from the attacker’s girlfriend, who had instigated the conflict.
Bragg’s office charged the bodega worker with murder and did not bring any charges against the girlfriend.
Bragg faced withering criticism for charging the older man who, according to surveillance footage, appeared to be defending himself against a brutal attack. New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a fellow Democrat, spoke out in support of the bodega worker, although he stopped short of hammering Bragg directly.
Bragg ultimately dropped the murder charges against the bodega worker amid the fierce public backlash but not before deepening the public’s perception of him as indifferent to the victims of crime.
Overall, his office has declined to go after many offenses even as New Yorkers report feeling less safe in the city.
Bragg’s office secured nearly 52% fewer sentences last year than in 2019, the last year before the pandemic scrambled the criminal justice system, according to data from the Manhattan DA’s office.
His office reportedly downgraded a significantly higher number of crimes to misdemeanors than did his predecessor’s.
But Bragg’s leniency has not extended to the Trump family, which has consumed much of Bragg’s focus for years.
Even before becoming Manhattan’s DA, Bragg focused on the former president, his businesses, and his foundation as a top official in the New York attorney general’s office.
Bragg helped spearhead a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation while Trump was president, leading to the closure of the foundation and a court-ordered payment from Trump of $2 million.
The Manhattan prosecutor boasted of his experience with Trump in April 2022 in a statement about the progress of investigations into the Trump Organization, Trump’s business umbrella.
“Litigation involving the former president himself is not foreign to me,” Bragg said. “As the Chief Deputy at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, I oversaw the successful litigation against the former president, his family, and the Trump Foundation.”
Bragg was even blunter while campaigning in 2021 for the job of DA, claiming that he had helped sue Trump more than 100 times during his presidency.
In December, Bragg touted trial convictions and guilty pleas resulting from his office’s investigations into the Trump Organization and the Trump Payroll Corp., both of which faced charges related to tax fraud.
Now, Bragg’s reported interest in Trump himself centers on a payment the former president made to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which ended up flowing to a porn star who had accused Trump of carrying on an affair with her.
The criminal charges Trump may face could stem from how he accounted for the payment in business records, as well as whether the payment constituted a violation of campaign finance laws.
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Trump’s team has denied both accusations; his aides and allies have noted that Cohen, a top witness for Bragg, has a long history of airing personal grievances about the former president and has in the past vowed to seek retribution against Trump.
Democrats are likely to cheer any indictment of Trump if one arrives. Even so, the stark contrast between Bragg’s lenient approach to crime in general and aggressive approach to Trump in particular could raise questions about his credibility as the case progresses.