By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Just over a year after taking office as Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg took a career-defining gamble: accuse a former U.S. president of crimes based on an untested legal theory.
The roll of the dice paid off Thursday, when a jury found Donald Trump guilty of all 34 charges he faced for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels — a monumental verdict that could have swayed the presidential election. can cause disruption. Trump is the Republican candidate.
The conviction goes a long way toward securing Bragg’s legacy as a courageous prosecutor unafraid to apply the law to one of the most powerful people in the country.
But it also means that Bragg, a Democrat who was present in the courtroom when the verdict was read, will remain a prime target for rhetorical attacks by Trump and his Republican allies, who say the charges were politically motivated.
“We had a prosecutor who is a failed prosecutor,” Trump said in a speech after the verdict on Friday. “Crime is rampant in New York… and Bragg is watching a trial over what they call crimes.”
Bragg’s office said May 30 that overall crime in Manhattan has fallen 8% over the past two years, while homicides and shootings have fallen 27% and 45%, respectively.
Bragg, 50, took over as district attorney in January 2022 after handling public corruption cases as a federal prosecutor and in the New York state attorney general’s office. Bragg, a graduate of Harvard Law School and the first black person to serve as a district attorney in Manhattan, says he decided to become a lawyer after being shot with guns six times while growing up in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood — three times by the police.
During his campaign, he promised to refrain from prosecuting some minor crimes and to demand reduced sentences for some crimes. He also highlighted his work overseeing a 2018 lawsuit that forced Trump’s eponymous foundation to dissolve.
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. Bragg declined to file charges in that case, but was charged in the hush money case in March 2023.
Bragg’s case even drew skepticism from Trump critics, who argued that the case appeared politically motivated and was not as serious as three other criminal cases Trump faces as a result of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and his handling of classified documents after he left the White House. . Trump has denied that he is guilty of all charges.
“He has made a political decision. Bragg may have won the battle for now, but he may have lost the political war,” Mitt Romney, a Republican senator who twice voted to impeach Trump, told The Atlantic journalist McKay Coppins after the verdict.
When asked Thursday about the criticism the case has received, Bragg said, “There are many voices. The only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken.”
Bragg’s office declined to comment. Trump’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.
‘I DID MY WORK’
The lawsuit is likely the only thing Trump will face before the Nov. 5 election, in which polls show him neck-and-neck with incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden.
The case used a new legal theory. Prosecutors said Trump falsified business records to conceal a conspiracy to unlawfully boost his candidacy for president in 2016, including a $130,000 payment to Daniels for her silence before the election about a sexual encounter she reported himself said he had ten years earlier – which Trump denies.
According to a book by Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor in the office, Bragg’s predecessor Vance declined to file charges in part because questions arose about whether the state crime could be charged in connection with a campaign for federal office. Pomerantz resigned in February 2022 after Bragg declined to file charges in the case over Trump’s business practices.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump over his real estate company’s business practices, which led to Trump being ordered to pay $454 million in fines and penalties earlier this year. Trump is on appeal.
Trump’s lawyers in the hush money case have argued that state election law does not apply to federal elections — a claim that will likely be central to their appeal of the verdict after Trump is convicted on July 11.
Although the case is unprecedented, Bragg’s theory is already supported by two judges: Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial, and U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who last year denied Trump’s bid to move the case from state court to move the federal court.
Bragg has also dismissed Trump’s claims that the case was politically motivated, calling falsification of corporate records a key concern in Manhattan – home to Wall Street and the self-proclaimed business capital of the world.
“I did my job,” Bragg told reporters Thursday after the sentencing. “I have personally done these kinds of things, and it is a hallmark of the tradition of this office that I am proud to lead.”
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Jonathan Oatis and Daniel Wallis)
