Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is melting down now that House Committees are asking questions, demanding documents, and interviews into what looks like the political targeting of President Donald Trump. Bragg is presently pursuing an indictment against Trump but, as we noted, there are a lot of problems in the case including the lies of the chief witness in the case, Michael Cohen. The grand jury proceedings were again postponed on Thursday, so they won’t have any further action on the matter until at least next week.
Bragg was responding in part to the following letters from the House Judiciary Committee calling his actions an “unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority.” They were trying to talk to the prosecutors who quit over Bragg’s refusal to proceed with the matter when he first came in because they likely this will shed more light that this action is political.
That appears to have been too much for Bragg, who then responded with a letter to GOP House committee chairmen Jim Jordan of Ohio, Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, and James Comer of Kentucky that is truly ironic. He tried to blame Trump for creating a “false expectation” that he was going to be arrested and talked about the confidentiality of the process that was important to “protect the government’s ability to prosecute fully and fairly.”
The district attorney’s office said the investigation “is one of thousands conducted” by the office in its history and that Bragg “stands by his pledge” to release the conclusion of the investigation publicly.
“Your letter dated March 20, 2023 (the ‘Letter’), in contrast, is an unprecedented inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” Bragg’s office wrote.
“The Letter only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene,” the letter accused. “Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”
Bragg’s office also called the lawmakers’ requests “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty” as well as argued that “federal funding is an insufficient basis to justify these unconstitutional requests.”
“False expectation?” Um, it was leaking out of Bragg’s office that precipitated all this response, Trump didn’t make that up. He was just, understandably reacting to it. Is Bragg now saying that it’s wrong to assume that there will be an arrest? It sounds like he’s backpedaling a bit there. If he just thought that he could sneak this turkey of a case by the grand jury, and get an indictment of the former president of the United States in a case that he had previously refused to pursue, he’s delusional. People are rightly concerned about the rule of law and political prosecutions, and his actions feel like three steps down the banana republic road.
Jordan noted that concern about political prosecutions in his letters to the former attorneys on the matter.
“This indictment comes after years of the District Attorney’s office aggressively pursuing charges, with you and other special prosecutors leading the investigation into every facet of President Trump’s finances. Last year, you resigned from the office over Bragg’s initial reluctance to move forward with charges in 2022, Bragg is now attempting to ‘shoehorn’ the same case with identical facts into a new prosecution,” Jordan wrote.
He added: “Based on your unique role in this matter, we request your cooperation with our oversight of this politically motivated prosecutorial decision.”
Jordan wants all the communications about the matter between Bragg and the two attorneys who quit.
But if this was meant to do in Trump, so far it’s had a positive aspect in that he’s surged in the latest Monmouth Poll, to a big jump over his anticipated rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has not yet declared his intention to run. Trump has also received a surge in donations, getting $1.5 million since Trump first posted about a possible arrest.