Donald Trump’s top supporters are urging him to prosecute and jail Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who led the criminal case that resulted in his felony conviction, if the former president enters the White House in November recaptures.
The effort to attack Bragg, a Democrat, is being led by Steve Bannon, who served as Trump’s White House strategist early in his first term and is himself being prosecuted by the same prosecutor over allegations that he has donors scammed into a scheme to finance a fund. wall along the US-Mexico border.
It comes amid consistent signals from Trump that he plans to prosecute his political opponents, including Joe Bidenif he returns to power. Republicans have further fueled Trump’s appetite for legal retribution by pushing the storyline that the Biden administration has “weaponized” the US Justice Department to deliberately prosecute the ex-president.
“Naturally [Bragg] should — and will — get a prison sentence,” Bannon told Axios.
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He said Bragg could be prosecuted under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal rights, the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of government property, and “dozens of other laws.”
Bannon compared the aggressive tactics a putative second Trump administration would have to pursue to “the evolution of every war” the US has fought in its history, including the War of Independence, the Civil War and the First and Second World Wars.
“They just get meaner over time,” he says.
Trump has repeatedly denounced Bragg for pursuing the state’s case in which the ex-president was found guilty last week of all 34 felonies of falsifying documents to conceal the payment of hush money to an adult film actor, Stormy Daniels, to get him to help win the 2016 presidential election. election.
The district attorney has yet to say whether he will seek a prison sentence ahead of a sentencing hearing scheduled for July 11. Notably, that date falls four days before the Republican national convention, where Trump will be formally adopted as the party’s presidential nominee.
Bannon’s comments about Bragg were echoed more widely by Trump himself on Tuesday in an interview with the right-wing Newsmax channel, in which he accused his political opponents of forcing him to retaliate by unfairly prosecuting him.
“It’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us down, and it’s very possible that it’s going to happen to them,” Trump said, referring to last week’s conviction, which he has falsely claimed was ordered by Biden was ordered. “Does this mean the next president will do this to them? That’s actually the question.”
Trump is known to be on the hunt for a Maga (Make America Great Again) committed loyalist who could serve in his administration as attorney general if he triumphs in November. He is likely hoping to avoid a repeat of his first appointee to the post, Jeff Sessions, whom he fired after recusing himself from an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“When you get the right person, it’s like magic,” he told Fox & Friends in an interview last weekend. “It’s just like in real estate: you know, you put a good super in a building, the building runs well. If you put a bad one in there, that won’t happen.”
Trump, who faces 54 other criminal charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential outcome, retention of classified documents and alleged election interference in Georgia, has at various points discussed prosecuting his political opponents through the courts – a tactic that the Republicans “legal aid”.
At the start of his 2024 presidential campaign, he promised to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in America’s history, Joe Biden, and the Biden crime family,” he said after being indicted by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on charges of concealment of classified documents from his time in the White House.
Another special prosecutor was appointed by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, to investigate Biden on similar allegations but concluded that the president did not intentionally commit a crime.
Garland took a defiant stance Tuesday, testifying before the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee. He accused members of the Republican Congress of spreading conspiracy theories and pushing false stories by claiming that the Justice Department led the prosecution of Trump, which led to the felony conviction last week.
Bragg, an elected New York state official, does not work under the authority of the Justice Department, a federal agency.
