Who is Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who will make history if he charges Donald Trump

by time news

Alvin Bragg made a milestone when, after overcoming intense primaries in the Democratic Party, he was elected in 2021 as the first black person to head the Manhattan district attorney’s office, one of the five that make up the public prosecutor’s office representing each of the New York neighborhoods York. Now, Bragg can enter the story through a bigger door: if he ends up presenting criminal charges against Donald Trump for payments the Republican made before the 2016 presidential election to silence porn star Stormy Daniels about a sexual relationship, which Trump denies, would make him the first prosecutor to indict a former US president.

That possibility has intensified attention and, by Trump and Republicans, vicious attacks on the 49-year-old progressive prosecutor, who has already been through turmoil in his 15 months in office. And now, despite being seen by friends and collaborators as someone who likes to keep a low profile, and who tries to avoid politics, Bragg finds himself immersed in the center of a storm that can become epic both politically and legally.

history with trump

Bragg was born and raised in Harlem, where he continues to live. He studied at the elite private Trinity School in Manhattan and later graduated from Harvard Law School. He was a federal prosecutor and then went on to number two in the New York state attorney’s office. There, in addition to working on cases such as Research Harvey Weinsteinoversaw the case against the Trump Foundationwhich ended with its closure and an agreement whereby the businessman agreed to pay two million dollars for having misused the donations to “intervene in the 2016 presidential primaries and promote his own political interests.”

There he also investigated police abuses of controversial “stop and frisk” tactics and was the first head of a special unit dedicated to investigate deaths caused by police violence. Upon leaving that position, and before running for office, he was a professor and civil rights attorney, eventually representing the mother and sister of Eric Garner, a black man who was suffocated to death by officers while selling loose cigarettes in Staten Island.

criminal justice reform

The fighting police abuse and misconduct was precisely one of the proposals on which Bragg campaigned, who also advocated the reform of the criminal justice systemthe end of mass incarceration and the reform of the cash finance system that contributes to this mass, especially punishing low-income people and minorities.

Like other prosecutors who are committed to this reform, the Bragg campaign received a donation (of half a million dollars) from Color of Change, a political action committee financed by George Soros, one of the black beasts for Trump and the conservatives, which They have not stopped in the last week to remember that financing.

Just two days after taking office, Bragg began to deliver what was promised. He issued a memo recommending to the 500 prosecutors in his office that they they will stop prosecuting some minor offensesurging them not to press charges for minor crimes and to stop recommending jail requests for others such as robbery, assault or possession of a firearm if in those cases there was no other crime.

The response was virulent from the police and the conservative world, but Bragg also faced criticism from moderate Democrats. New York mayor Eric Adams, a former police officer who won his election with a safety focused campaignHe assured, for example, that his measures encouraged crime. And Bragg backed down, issuing a statement apologizing for the “confusion,” withdrawing the instructions and clarifying that decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis.

Another case against Trump parked

It was not the only seizure in his first steps in a prosecutor’s office where he has created a new division specialized in victims, has hired new leaders for the one that prosecutes sexual crimeshas intensified the work in favor of the rights of tenants or employees and has reinforced the fight against firearms and police abuse.

Carey Dunne and Mark Pomerantz, two prosecutors who under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, had been investigating Trump’s finances, resigned in February when Bragg decided to shelve that case for the time being, centering on the president’s alleged value-inflating tactics. of their assets to get credit. they did it with fierce criticismespecially Pomerantz, who later wrote a book.

Those who know and have worked with Bragg, as well as legal experts, say that he simply fit his profile: methodical, attentive to detail, and convinced not to make a case unless he considers it “very strong,” something Pomerantz and Dunne did not. they seemed to have succeeded. And Bragg abandoned that investigation of the possibility that Trump had personally committed fraud, he did not stop working.

Banon imputation

In September he succeeded in indicting Steve Bannon for money laundering, conspiracy and fraud for diverting funds allegedly raised to build the wall on the border with Mexico for which Trump clamored. And in December he secured a conviction on 17 counts of tax fraud and other financial crimes from two units of the Trump Organization, thanks in part to testimony from financial adviser Allen Weisselberg, who agreed to testify in exchange for a lighter sentence (five months jail).

After that conviction of the former president’s business network, in addition, Bragg revived what in the office had been known for years as the ‘zombie case’: that of the payments to Stormy Daniels. In January he convened the grand jury, which has since heard testimony and seen evidence and will now determine whether to file the landmark charges.

attacks and defense

It is not certain that there will be an imputation and many legal doubts surround the case, which would potentially be built with a novel combination of the crime of falsifying documents to hide payments with a more serious violation of campaign finance lawsbut that has not prevented attacks by Trump and his allies, who accuse Bragg of “racist” or links to Soros.

In the now Republican-controlled lower house, three committee chairmen have accused him of “unprecedented abuse of tax authority” and demanded that he meet with them and provide documents about the investigation, including potential records of conversations with the Department of Justice, which would support Trump’s allegations of a “political witch hunt“.

Bragg has responded strongly. “We will not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the process of justice, we will not let baseless accusations divert us from the fair application of the law,” he read in a statement issued by a spokesman. “In each case – he adds – we follow the law without fear or favoritism to discover the truth.”

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