By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Alvin Bragg says he decided to become a lawyer after having a gun pulled on him six times while growing up in New York — three times by police.
A quarter century after graduating from Harvard Law School, the Manhattan district attorney’s legacy will be defined by the looming verdict in one of the most consequential cases in American history: the criminal trial of the former president Donald Trump about hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The trial, which ends after more than a month, is likely the only trial the Republican presidential candidate, who is challenging Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden, will face before the Nov. 5 election. Prosecutors finished calling witnesses on Monday and the defense rested its case on Tuesday, paving the way for closing arguments and jury deliberations next week.
Since Bragg unveiled the first of four charges against Trump last year, he has regularly been the target of Trump’s vitriolic social media posts.
A gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan to limit Trump’s public statements about jurors, witnesses and individual accusers does not apply to Bragg, an elected official.
“The Crooked New York City District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who allows violent crime to run rampant on the sidewalks of New York, has absolutely NO CASE AGAINST ME,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on May 4. “ELECTION INFERENCES!!!”
Bragg’s office says overall crime in Manhattan has fallen 8% over the past two years, with homicides and shootings down 29% and 46%, respectively.
The former president is accused of covering up a refund to a former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid Daniels $130,000 before the 2016 election for her silence about a sexual relationship she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Bragg, who took office in January 2022, has said cases involving falsification of corporate documents are the “bread and butter” of his office’s white-collar work.
“This is the business capital of the world,” Bragg told reporters after the indictment was unveiled on April 4, 2023. ‘The basis for business integrity and a well-functioning business market is truthful and accurate administration.’
Bragg has occasionally attended the trial, sitting in the audience in the courtroom in a spot reserved for his office’s staff.
‘I HAVE DONE THIS KIND OF WORK’
The lawsuit is not the first time Bragg, 50, has taken Trump to court.
After handling fraud and money laundering cases as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, he joined the New York State Attorney General’s Office. There he oversaw a 2018 lawsuit that forced Trump’s eponymous foundation to dissolve.
“I’ve done this kind of work under this kind of supervision,” Bragg said during his 2021 campaign for district attorney, referring to the Trump Foundation case.
In late 2022, he was convicted by the Trump Organization on charges of orchestrating a 15-year tax fraud scheme initiated by his predecessor, Cyrus Vance. Trump was not personally charged in the case.
Bragg also inherited Vance’s investigation into whether Trump misrepresented his real estate values. But Bragg declined to file charges in that case, prompting the prosecutor who led the case, Mark Pomerantz, to resign in 2022. Bragg has said the case was not over yet.
Pomerantz’s resignation came as Bragg, Manhattan’s first black district attorney, fended off criticism from Republicans and some Democrats over a plan to refrain from prosecuting some minor crimes and seek reduced sentences for some crimes.
Bragg, who frequently discussed during his campaign his experiences of having guns pulled on him while growing up in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, said “excessive incarceration” has contributed to racial disparities and has not improved public safety. He later backtracked on some reforms.
Bragg has also faced dissent from Trump’s critics over the hush money case. Many say the case is not as serious as the other three criminal cases Trump faces in Washington, Florida and Georgia.
Bragg has responded by emphasizing that the New York case concerns the 2016 election. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations over the Daniels payment.
“The bottom line is not money for sex,” Bragg said in a December radio interview with WNYC. “It’s a conspiracy to corrupt the presidential election.”
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Jonathan Oatis)
