Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who’s reportedly planning to prosecute Donald Trump over “hush” payments to Stormy Daniels made in 2016, sent an email to his employees Saturday afternoon outlining his plans to protect them from any physical threats arising from the arrest, and laughably claims that his office applies the law “evenly and fairly,” and that they “speak publicly only when appropriate.
Considering the number of charges he’s dropped and the percentage of felony charges he’s reduced to misdemeanor (52!), it’s crystal clear that the only people whose safety he cares about are the people in his office, and given the overall state of the city those words ring hollow.
According to the email, obtained by independent journalist Breanna Morello, Bragg wrote in part:
“…Please know that your safety is our top priority. We have full confidence in our outstanding security staff and investigators, along with our great OCA and NYPD colleagues, and will continue to coordinate with all of them. We do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.
Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.
This office is full of the finest public servants in the country. I am committed to maintaining a safe work environment where everyone is able to continue to serve the public with the same diligence and professionalism that make this institution so renowned. In the meantime, as with all of our investigations, We will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate.”
What’s threatening the rule of law in New York is Bragg himself, and his politically-motivated and legally extremely questionable planned prosecution of Donald Trump is just the latest example. As readers might recall, in July 2022 Bragg pressed charges against a bodega owner who killed a violent parolee who attacked him during an armed robbery:
61-year-old, 5′ 7″ [Joe] Alba was attacked by 35-year-old, 6-foot violent parolee Austin Simon. Alba fought him off with a knife, ultimately killing him. Alba was ordered held under $250,000 bail, down from the staggering $500,000 initially requested by Bragg, sent to Rikers Island, and charged with 2nd-degree murder in an outrageous prosecutorial overreach. The bail was eventually lowered, but Tuesday the actual (ridiculous) charges were finally dropped after enormous public outcry.
After Bragg took office in January 2022 he rejected filing charges against Trump, but that has obviously changed:
Bragg himself wasn’t hot for this case when he came in, and two prosecutors quit because Bragg was refusing to go along with this. But desperation can go a long way. Turley points out that one of the prosecutors even wrote a book trying to lay out the case against Trump, which Turley said was “shocking” because it was “unprofessional and improper.” But now, Bragg ultimately appears to have caved into Democratic pressure and is going ahead with this charade.
Even and fair application of the law, my foot.