Alvin Bragg’s Official Biography describes him as the “son of Harlem” who became Manhattan District Attorney after “a lifetime of hard work, courage, and demanding justice.”
With a grand jury indicting Donald Trump over his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016, the Democrat has now carved his place in history as the man behind the first vote on a former president’s criminal indictment.
Related: Donald Trump charged Stormy Daniels with paying hush money in 2016
Bragg, 49, is a Harvard-educated former New York State Assistant Attorney General and Assistant US Attorney in the Southern District of New York.
In 2021 he became first Black Manhattan prosecutor and only the fourth permanent holder of the post in 80 years.
In office, his biography says, his focus was “to protect everyday New Yorkers from encroachment by those in power and to right past injustices by overturning false convictions.”
The biography also highlights the establishment of a Special Victims Unit to handle “extremely sensitive cases in a trauma-informed and survivor-centered manner” and an expansion of a Hate Crimes Unit.
However, Bragg has prominent detractors. Chief among them is Mark Pomerantz, a veteran New York prosecutor who joined an investigation into Trump started by Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., but resigned in February 2022.
In his resignation letter, Pomerantz said Trump was guilty of “numerous criminal offenses” in his business and political affairs and called Bragg’s initial decision not to press charges “a serious failure of the judiciary.” The two men exchanged gunfire in the press.
Last month, Pomerantz published a book detailing efforts to make Trump’s hush money payment to Stormy Daniels a viable avenue to prosecution.
Pomerantz referred to the Daniels payment as “zombie case‘ because it wouldn’t die. A month later, it emerged that Bragg was responding to an indictment against Trump in the same case.
Bragg’s official biography now highlights a Charged with six counts against Trump ally Steve Bannon for fraud and the conviction by Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, for tax evasion.
Bragg has also faced criticism for his approach to crime, not least from New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
In early 2022, Bragg issued a memo directing prosecutors to avoid seeking jail time for all but the most serious crimes. In a city where there is always crime a key political issueand in an atmosphere of heightened concern fueled by the disruptions of the Covid pandemic, Sewell told According to NYPD officials, she was “deeply concerned.”
Bragg said the memo was misunderstood. After meeting, he and Sewell agreed that “police and prosecutors would weigh the individual facts and circumstances of each case with a view to justice and work together to ensure the safety of New Yorkers.”
Later in 2022, the issue of crime and punishment flared up again in New York. After a Hispanic Harlem storekeeper stabbed a black attacker, Bragg charged the storekeeper with second-degree murder. after one outcrywere the fees dropped.
Source : news.yahoo.com