Bragg Is Throwing a Fit at House GOP and Backpedaling Furiously
Mar 29, 2023 15:36:48 #
Manhattan DA Says Trump Made Up Arrest Story
(VitalNews.org) – The Manhattan District Attorney, bent on prosecuting former President Donald Trump, sent a letter to several House Republican committee chairmen, rebuking them for what he says is improper Congressional intrusion into a local justice system affair.
DA Alvin Bragg’s office sent the letter to three top Republicans from different House committees. Each of these committees has asked Bragg’s office for more information on its attempts to prosecute Trump for allegedly violating campaign finance laws in 2016. DA Bragg’s legal theory, described by top court watchers and lawyers as dubious, suggests that hush money Trump supposedly paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair between the two in 2006.
The Republican chairmen investigating the issue are Jim Jordan of Ohio, head of the Judiciary Committee; Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chairman of the Administration Committee; and Kentucky’s James Comer, chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Bragg’s letter said the investigation into Trump is “one of thousands conducted” by the office and that DA Bragg will release the results of his investigation publicly. But the letters sent by the committee chairs constituted “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” the letter said.
Bragg’s office continued, stating that the Republicans only sent their inquiries to his office after Trump “created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day,” and only after Trump’s lawyers asked the chairmen to intervene.
Earlier in the week, Donald Trump used his social media platform, T***h Social, to claim that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office planned to arrest him on March 21. Bragg’s office says that is not true.
But the ongoing investigation into Trump has drawn the interest of Republican lawmakers who believe that political vendettas, not the pursuit of justice, are driving the DA’s office.
Jim Jordan has said he believes Bragg changed his mind about arresting Trump only after Trump made his claims.
Copyright 2023, VitalNews.org
(VitalNews.org) – The Manhattan District Attorney, bent on prosecuting former President Donald Trump, sent a letter to several House Republican committee chairmen, rebuking them for what he says is improper Congressional intrusion into a local justice system affair.
DA Alvin Bragg’s office sent the letter to three top Republicans from different House committees. Each of these committees has asked Bragg’s office for more information on its attempts to prosecute Trump for allegedly violating campaign finance laws in 2016. DA Bragg’s legal theory, described by top court watchers and lawyers as dubious, suggests that hush money Trump supposedly paid Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair between the two in 2006.
The Republican chairmen investigating the issue are Jim Jordan of Ohio, head of the Judiciary Committee; Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, chairman of the Administration Committee; and Kentucky’s James Comer, chairman of the Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Bragg’s letter said the investigation into Trump is “one of thousands conducted” by the office and that DA Bragg will release the results of his investigation publicly. But the letters sent by the committee chairs constituted “an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” the letter said.
Bragg’s office continued, stating that the Republicans only sent their inquiries to his office after Trump “created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day,” and only after Trump’s lawyers asked the chairmen to intervene.
Earlier in the week, Donald Trump used his social media platform, T***h Social, to claim that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office planned to arrest him on March 21. Bragg’s office says that is not true.
But the ongoing investigation into Trump has drawn the interest of Republican lawmakers who believe that political vendettas, not the pursuit of justice, are driving the DA’s office.
Jim Jordan has said he believes Bragg changed his mind about arresting Trump only after Trump made his claims.
Copyright 2023, VitalNews.org
Mar 31, 2023 00:34:38 #
Who is Alvin Bragg? The Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted Donald Trump
Former president Donald Trump fired out three furious all-caps posts on his T***h Social page on 18 March, invoking images of burning cities and World War III while stoking unrest with a call for his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” what he predicted would be his arrest in New York.
Alvin Bragg – the Manhattan district attorney whose office is overseeing a criminal investigation into the former president’s business practices following long-running allegations of fraud – issued a memo to his staff in response, stressing that he does “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
His internal message did not mention the former president by name or his incendiary rhetoric, but he referred to “public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”
Mr Bragg has been tight-lipped about the case and his office’s work, ensuring in his recent memo that, “as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
On March 30, a Manhattan grand jury v**ed to indict Mr Trump, the first former president to ever face criminal charges.
Right-wing opponents, meanwhile, have bombarded Mr Bragg’s office with claims of e******n i**********e or raised baseless conspiracy theories, including antisemitic and r****t attacks, that accuse Mr Bragg of leading a politically motivated case against the 2024 candidate for president.
Mr Trump’s allies and right-wing pundits have baselessly accused Manhattan prosecutors of mounting a politically motivated investigation while ignoring violent crime.
Last year, homicides in New York City fell by 12 per cent while shootings dropped by 17 per cent compared to 2021, the lowest rates since 2019, and significantly lower than massive surges in 1980s and 1990s. Spikes in robberies and burglaries drove a 22 per cent overall jump in so-called major crimes, and overall crimes dropped precipitously in February with significant decreases in murders, shootings and subway crimes, continuing what New York City Police Department officials report as a downward trend.
The former president and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have also placed Mr Bragg at the centre of antisemitic and r****t conspiracy theories, alleging Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros is directing Mr Bragg’s investigation at the expense of the lives of Black New Yorkers. On 19 March, Fox News programme Fox & Friends said that the Black prosecutor “has to pay his master back” by prosecuting Mr Trump.
Manhattan’s first-ever Black district attorney was overwhelmingly elected to the role in 2021 with 84 per cent of the borough’s v**e.
A criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s business empire includes a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels and long-running allegations that he inflated the value of his properties and assets to fraudulently obtain loans and defraud his lenders, which also is at the centre of a separate civil lawsuit from the office of the New York Attorney General.
Mr Bragg inherited the case from his predecessor Cy Vance, who began his investigation into Mr Trump while he was still in the White House.
The 49-year-old former state attorney and federal prosecutor from Harlem has been involved with lawsuits against the Trump administration more than 100 times.
As the chief deputy attorney general for the state of New York, Mr Bragg led a lawsuit against the Donald J Trump Foundation, which resulted in then-president Trump admitting that he used the organisation for political purposes and for his business under an alleged scheme that the office of New York attorney general called “a shocking pattern of illegality”. The foundation agreed to pay out $2m to charities and agreed to dissolve.
In November 2021, Mr Bragg handily defeated Republican opponent Thomas Kenniff in a general e******n for New York County District Attorney. He was sworn into office on 1 January 2022.
“In addition to being the first Black district attorney, I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” Mr Bragg said during a victory speech after his e******n.
“I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semi-automatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one re-enter from incarceration and stay with him,” he added. “And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”
An early memo from Mr Bragg’s office said he would only seek jail time for the most serious offences with a goal to keep non-violent or first-time offenders out of jail, stressing that locking people up does not stop or slow crime. After widespread criticism from police groups and public officials, he later clarified that prosecutors ultimately have that discretion.
But the pledge outraged right-wing tabloids and Republican officials; Mr Bragg’s policy likely would have had a significant impact on hundreds of people routinely sent to jail for non-violent crimes, an effort that has increasingly seen bipartisan support.
Right-wing media and Republican officials routinely painted New York City as lawless and crime-infested, pointing the blame at recent laws aimed at reforming the money bail system.
New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, however, has reported that the re-arrest rate is “nearly identical” since the reforms were implemented in 2020. Criminologists have not made any meaningful connections between crime rates and so-called “progressive” prosecutors.
Mr Bragg’s office and investigations were roundly criticised by Republican candidates across the country in last year’s e******ns, including by then-candidate for New York governor Lee Zeldin, a campaign that the GOP hoped would chip away at the state’s reliable Democratic firewall ahead of 2024.
Mr Zeldin accused the district attorney of abandoning his duties and “refusing to enforce the law” after Mr Bragg pledged that his office would limit the kinds of cases for which prosecutors would seek prison sentences, a line of attack that echoed across the country as candidates pounced on progressive prosecutors to advance a “tough on crime” message. (Mr Zeldin’s campaign also aired a violent advert telling v**ers to cast their b****ts “like their lives depended on it”.)
While in office, Mr Bragg also opened a new Special Victims Division to focus on sex crimes, human trafficking and domestic violence. The office’s h**e crimes unit also has expanded with additional prosecutors and investigators.
After he was repeatedly asked that year whether an investigation into Mr Trump and his Trump Organization was still ongoing, Mr Bragg said: “It is.”
Prosecutors “are going through documents, interviewing witnesses and exploring evidence not previously explored,” he added.
Mr Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal charge relating to a $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels two years earlier in the run up to 2016’s p**********l e******n. Notably, the case from federal prosecutors during the Trump administration who outlined Cohen’s actions made in service of then-President Trump.
The payment allegedly intended to buy Ms Daniels’ silence before she spoke publicly about an alleged affair with then-candidate Trump. Cohen was allegedly repaid the money he gave to her in payments that could be grounds for felony falsification of business records. Mr Trump has continued to deny the affair.
Mr Trump appears to have been the only person to have “leaked” news of his predicted arrest. He made similar claims during a federal law enforcement search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, publicising that a “raid” was underway before law enforcement agencies did.
Former president Donald Trump fired out three furious all-caps posts on his T***h Social page on 18 March, invoking images of burning cities and World War III while stoking unrest with a call for his supporters to “protest, protest, protest” what he predicted would be his arrest in New York.
Alvin Bragg – the Manhattan district attorney whose office is overseeing a criminal investigation into the former president’s business practices following long-running allegations of fraud – issued a memo to his staff in response, stressing that he does “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”
His internal message did not mention the former president by name or his incendiary rhetoric, but he referred to “public comments surrounding an ongoing investigation by this office.”
Mr Bragg has been tight-lipped about the case and his office’s work, ensuring in his recent memo that, “as with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
On March 30, a Manhattan grand jury v**ed to indict Mr Trump, the first former president to ever face criminal charges.
Right-wing opponents, meanwhile, have bombarded Mr Bragg’s office with claims of e******n i**********e or raised baseless conspiracy theories, including antisemitic and r****t attacks, that accuse Mr Bragg of leading a politically motivated case against the 2024 candidate for president.
Mr Trump’s allies and right-wing pundits have baselessly accused Manhattan prosecutors of mounting a politically motivated investigation while ignoring violent crime.
Last year, homicides in New York City fell by 12 per cent while shootings dropped by 17 per cent compared to 2021, the lowest rates since 2019, and significantly lower than massive surges in 1980s and 1990s. Spikes in robberies and burglaries drove a 22 per cent overall jump in so-called major crimes, and overall crimes dropped precipitously in February with significant decreases in murders, shootings and subway crimes, continuing what New York City Police Department officials report as a downward trend.
The former president and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have also placed Mr Bragg at the centre of antisemitic and r****t conspiracy theories, alleging Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros is directing Mr Bragg’s investigation at the expense of the lives of Black New Yorkers. On 19 March, Fox News programme Fox & Friends said that the Black prosecutor “has to pay his master back” by prosecuting Mr Trump.
Manhattan’s first-ever Black district attorney was overwhelmingly elected to the role in 2021 with 84 per cent of the borough’s v**e.
A criminal investigation into Mr Trump’s business empire includes a hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels and long-running allegations that he inflated the value of his properties and assets to fraudulently obtain loans and defraud his lenders, which also is at the centre of a separate civil lawsuit from the office of the New York Attorney General.
Mr Bragg inherited the case from his predecessor Cy Vance, who began his investigation into Mr Trump while he was still in the White House.
The 49-year-old former state attorney and federal prosecutor from Harlem has been involved with lawsuits against the Trump administration more than 100 times.
As the chief deputy attorney general for the state of New York, Mr Bragg led a lawsuit against the Donald J Trump Foundation, which resulted in then-president Trump admitting that he used the organisation for political purposes and for his business under an alleged scheme that the office of New York attorney general called “a shocking pattern of illegality”. The foundation agreed to pay out $2m to charities and agreed to dissolve.
In November 2021, Mr Bragg handily defeated Republican opponent Thomas Kenniff in a general e******n for New York County District Attorney. He was sworn into office on 1 January 2022.
“In addition to being the first Black district attorney, I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” Mr Bragg said during a victory speech after his e******n.
“I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semi-automatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one re-enter from incarceration and stay with him,” he added. “And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”
An early memo from Mr Bragg’s office said he would only seek jail time for the most serious offences with a goal to keep non-violent or first-time offenders out of jail, stressing that locking people up does not stop or slow crime. After widespread criticism from police groups and public officials, he later clarified that prosecutors ultimately have that discretion.
But the pledge outraged right-wing tabloids and Republican officials; Mr Bragg’s policy likely would have had a significant impact on hundreds of people routinely sent to jail for non-violent crimes, an effort that has increasingly seen bipartisan support.
Right-wing media and Republican officials routinely painted New York City as lawless and crime-infested, pointing the blame at recent laws aimed at reforming the money bail system.
New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, however, has reported that the re-arrest rate is “nearly identical” since the reforms were implemented in 2020. Criminologists have not made any meaningful connections between crime rates and so-called “progressive” prosecutors.
Mr Bragg’s office and investigations were roundly criticised by Republican candidates across the country in last year’s e******ns, including by then-candidate for New York governor Lee Zeldin, a campaign that the GOP hoped would chip away at the state’s reliable Democratic firewall ahead of 2024.
Mr Zeldin accused the district attorney of abandoning his duties and “refusing to enforce the law” after Mr Bragg pledged that his office would limit the kinds of cases for which prosecutors would seek prison sentences, a line of attack that echoed across the country as candidates pounced on progressive prosecutors to advance a “tough on crime” message. (Mr Zeldin’s campaign also aired a violent advert telling v**ers to cast their b****ts “like their lives depended on it”.)
While in office, Mr Bragg also opened a new Special Victims Division to focus on sex crimes, human trafficking and domestic violence. The office’s h**e crimes unit also has expanded with additional prosecutors and investigators.
After he was repeatedly asked that year whether an investigation into Mr Trump and his Trump Organization was still ongoing, Mr Bragg said: “It is.”
Prosecutors “are going through documents, interviewing witnesses and exploring evidence not previously explored,” he added.
Mr Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to a federal charge relating to a $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels two years earlier in the run up to 2016’s p**********l e******n. Notably, the case from federal prosecutors during the Trump administration who outlined Cohen’s actions made in service of then-President Trump.
The payment allegedly intended to buy Ms Daniels’ silence before she spoke publicly about an alleged affair with then-candidate Trump. Cohen was allegedly repaid the money he gave to her in payments that could be grounds for felony falsification of business records. Mr Trump has continued to deny the affair.
Mr Trump appears to have been the only person to have “leaked” news of his predicted arrest. He made similar claims during a federal law enforcement search of his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, publicising that a “raid” was underway before law enforcement agencies did.
Apr 1, 2023 06:13:32 #
Ronald Hatt
Loc: Lansing, Mich
eagleye13 wrote:
America better v**e those scoundrels out for our Republic to survive.
So far, it is painfully evident that demoncrats, have not the IQ, to elect anyone but Criminals, & inept i***ts to serve them!
Demoncraps, should be made to pass a History, & Government test, before v****g!
Apr 1, 2023 14:55:19 #
Ronald Hatt wrote:
So far, it is painfully evident that demoncrats, have not the IQ, to elect anyone but Criminals, & inept i***ts to serve them!
Demoncraps, should be made to pass a History, & Government test, before v****g!
Demoncraps, should be made to pass a History, & Government test, before v****g!
"Demoncraps, should be made to pass a History, & Government test, before v****g!"
Then there would ba a lot fewer v**ers v****g for Democrats.
Apr 2, 2023 06:42:30 #
Ronald Hatt
Loc: Lansing, Mich
eagleye13 wrote:
"Demoncraps, should be made to pass a History, & Government test, before v****g!"
Then there would ba a lot fewer v**ers v****g for Democrats.
Then there would ba a lot fewer v**ers v****g for Democrats.
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