Alvin Bragg is remembered as the first US Attorney to indict a former President. This should bring Manhattan’s first black chief prosecutor international fame: as an opponent of former President Donald Trump and, as a consequence, an enemy of the American right.
The attacks against Bragg were not long in coming. As soon as the charges against Trump in a hush-money affair became known, verbal attacks rained down on Manhattan’s senior attorney general. Trump described the 49-year-old lawyer as a “disgrace” who did the “dirty work” for President Joe Biden. Party friends of the former president accused Bragg of “un-American” behavior and an instrumentalization of the judiciary, with which he had “irreparably damaged” the USA.
That Bragg finds himself in this role is not without irony. After taking office as chief prosecutor in Manhattan in early January 2022, he caused a stir by deciding not to prosecute Trump in connection with his business empire’s financial conduct. Outraged by the decision, the two prosecutors responsible for the investigation, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, promptly resigned.
Protests keep forming in front of the court in New York – for and against Trump
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Image: AFP
Pomerantz eventually published a book in which he portrayed Bragg as reluctant to seek a trial against the ex-president. The rather media-shy Bragg countered in one of his few TV interviews: “I bring hard cases when they are ready”. And Mark Pomerantz’s case wasn’t ready yet.
Trump called Bragg a ‘racist’
Trump’s indictment for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels has now cleared this hurdle – which means a political firestorm from the American right for Bragg personally and his employees.
This depicts Bragg as a Democrat who is soft on criminals and prefers to abuse his power to avoid political opponents rather than to ensure law and order. Indirect campaign support for Bragg from US investor George Soros, who is hated by conservatives, provides additional ammunition.
The investigation into Trump is making the cash register ring for cartoonists.
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Image: Reuters
Trump himself had already called Bragg a “racist”. And the call for his supporters to protest the indictment — and Trump’s alleged arrest — was a fatal reminder to many Americans of Trump’s defiance rhetoric just before the Capitol stormed on January 6, 2021.
While the security precautions around the courthouse in Manhattan were already being increased, Bragg swore his colleagues to turbulent weeks and months. In a letter to staff quoted in the US media, he promised that all threats against the prosecutor’s office would be investigated: “We will not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
Despite his membership in the Democratic Party, the 49-year-old is not overly interested in political intrigues. Bragg has always claimed to make decisions based on legal considerations, not political calculations. “The second we think we’re politicians, we take a real wrong turn,” he told the New York Times a few months after taking office.
Politically explosive investigations
But of course the office also has a political dimension. Chief prosecutors like Bragg are elected in the US, and the 49-year-old is a member of the Democratic Party. Prosecutors also have wide discretion over which cases to prosecute and which not. And there is no question that investigations into an ex-head of state and presidential candidate are politically highly explosive.
The Republicans repeatedly point out that not only did Bragg’s predecessor Vance not pursue the allegations of hush money against Trump, but also the federal prosecutor’s office and the US election commission. That in itself does not mean that the allegations against Trump cannot be valid. But some legal experts are also wondering whether Bragg can win a lawsuit against Trump in the legally complex case.
Bragg became the first black man to be elected chief attorney for Manhattan in the fall of 2021. The Harvard University graduate from Harlem, New York, can look back on a long career as a public prosecutor. He has worked for the New York State Attorney’s Office and the New York State Attorney General’s Office, among others.
During the election campaign for the top job in Manhattan, he campaigned, among other things, for a focus on rehabilitation for minor crimes and sending fewer people to prison. That made him a target for Republicans, who accuse the Democrats of being weak in the fight against crime.
Bragg experienced crime firsthand: “Before I was 21, I had a gun pointed at me six times: three times by police officers and three times by non-cops. I had a knife on my neck, a semi-automatic gun on my head, and a murder victim on my doorstep.”
The father of the family wrote this to his employees two days after taking up the post of district attorney in January 2022. After a narrowly won election, the Harvard graduate introduced his new agenda with the memo, which brought him a lot of internal criticism and opposition from the police: the instruction to direct more resources to the prosecution of serious violent crimes and less to crimes related to drugs or prostitution use.