Alvin Bragg's "Soft on Crime" Policies Face Scrutiny as Manhattan DA Goes After Trump

On January 1, 2022, Alvin Bragg pledged "one standard of justice for all" and "a new perspective" as he was sworn in as Manhattan's first Black district attorney, recalling how he had been stopped by police at gunpoint as a 15-year-old boy.

He would make history once more if he were to indict Donald Trump and have him arrested. His investigation of Trump has already shown that he's no softie when it comes to his treatment of a wealthy former president and leading presidential candidate—but it is also fueling the accusations of critics that his progressive policies are soft on New York's day-to-day crime.

Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday, that he believed he would be arrested on Tuesday, without presenting evidence. Bragg has been investigating Trump's alleged involvement in an illegal scheme to pay hush money to an adult film star ahead of the 2016 election.

Bragg is a Democrat and the line of attack from Trump and his supporters is that the DA's investigations are politically motivated. Bragg's record will be scrutinized on a national level by conservatives seeking to demonize Bragg as a progressive elitist with little regard for the victims of crime in his own city.

Bragg did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment. Nor did Trump.

On Sunday, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy showed the direction that Trump's allies would be taking by tweeting: "Alvin Bragg is abusing his office to target President Trump while he's reduced a majority of felonies, including violent crimes, to misdemeanors. He has different rules for political opponents."

Bragg's position, and that of his supporters, is that he is waging a battle against a lack of equity in the criminal justice system, given that there is an outsized proportion of minorities being sent to prison. Trump is on record calling Bragg a "racist," and his allies say the DA's tactics have led to a surge in crimes committed in Manhattan as prosecutions have fallen.

"Bragg has been in office just a year, but Manhattan seems to be getting progressively worse in crime," said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, which describes itself as a non-partisan research organization with academics affiliated from Harvard University, The Wharton School, University of Chicago, University of Michigan and Emory University. Lott is also author of the book "More Guns, Less Crime."

According to his group's research, culled from the Manhattan D.A. Office's Data Dashboard, from 2021 to 2022, Manhattan's seven major felony offenses (murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto) rose by 26 percent to the highest since 2006.

The investigations into Trump have been over accusations of involvement in payments of a total of $280,000 to porn actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal so that they would keep quiet about earlier relationships with him as he was running for president in 2016. Any indictment would be expected to include testimony from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.

Trump has already made clear he does not expect fair treatment if indicted and at the weekend posted the message: "PROTEST. TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY."

Suggesting that message could be interpreted as a call to riot rather than protest, MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner told the network on Saturday that Trump "has now just given the judge that will preside over his arraignment hearing food for thought about what kind of conditions should be set for the release of this dangerous man pending trial."

The payments to Daniels and McDougal are alleged violations of campaign finance laws since they were unreported, though such violations are typically the purview of the federal government, not a Manhattan DA, and they're rarely called a "felony," according to Lott.

"This is supposedly a violation involving a federal campaign, so it is only covered by federal law," said Lott.

Lott notes that there were no calls to bring felony charges against Hillary Clinton after the Federal Election Commission fined her campaign and the Democratic National Committee for hiding their funding of the "Steele dossier" that accused Trump of colluding with Russia to win the presidency.

He also noted that Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance, refused to bring a case against Trump. "Bragg himself declined to pursue this case when he first became DA. The US Department of Justice has also refused to bring this case, as has the Federal Election Commission," he said.

Drop in Prosecutions

Overall, Bragg's position has been to reduce the number of prosecutions.

Just days after he was sworn in, Bragg issued a memo saying that he would not prosecute a list of crimes — including prostitution, trespassing, resisting arrest and most misdemeanors — in the interest of "safety and fairness" while noting racial disparities in incarceration. He walked back some of the memo under pressure one month later, but his critics say his measures have encouraged crime.

Bragg's position on law enforcement is in the mold of other Georg Soros-backed DAs, including Kim Foxx in Chicago, George Gascon, who survived a recall effort in Los Angeles, and Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco DA who was successfully recalled. Soros, a billionaire progressive philanthropist, helped fund their elections through various non-profits and political action committees. In the case of Bragg, the progressive PAC, Color of Change, backed by Soros according to OpenSecrets.org, donated about $500,000 to Bragg's campaign.

"For too long, New Yorkers have lived under two systems of justice," Color of Change said in a 2021 press release announcing it was backing Bragg financially. "One system protects and privileges the powerful and well-connected; the other victimizes and penalizes people of color and the powerless."

Newsweek's request for comment from Soros was sent to his Open Society Foundations.

Joe Tacopina, Trump's criminal defense attorney, did not respond to Newsweek's request for comment. He recently told MSNBC that Trump was not at liberty to discuss the alleged hush money he paid to the two women because he'd be violating a confidential settlement, thus he didn't do anything illegal by denying he made the payments. Trump said in a post at Truth Social that he is "completely innocent."

As for the political optics of a possible indictment, Tacopina told MSNBC that it could "catapult" Trump into the White House for a second term. "This will show how they're weaponizing the justice system," he said.

A number of senior Republican politicians have shared similar views.

"From Trump's perspective, the real record does not matter either way. He will say that anybody who opposes him is corrupt and is in league with evil forces," said John Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.

"Trump's supporters will applaud his attacks on a Democratic prosecutor. As for the general electorate, a lot will depend on the strength of the cases that Bragg makes," he said.

After Bragg's initial "soft on crime" memo, as critics called it, he issued a follow-up in which he said robberies would be felonies if they involved the use of a real or fake gun, while his first memo said robberies were felonies only if there was "a genuine risk of physical harm." He also clarified that resisting arrest was a felony if it involved harm or the potential harm of a police officer.

But critics say the proof is in the pudding. Bragg's hailing of a drop in conviction rates is primarily due to his office declining to prosecute cases in the first place, says Lott.

According to Lott's group, the number of felony cases Bragg declined to prosecute rose 35 percent in 2022 compared to 2019, while the drop in misdemeanor prosecutions resulting in jail sentences fell by 78 percent. "What makes this all the more remarkable is that this huge drop occurred while the number of offenses was increasing," said Lott.

The New York Post has been among Bragg's most prominent critics. Sample headline: "Armed robbers, drug dealers and burglars, rejoice! You have a friend in new Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg."

Four months ago, the New York Post reported that four charges of larceny would be dropped against an alleged gang member with a long history of crime who was accused of stealing $25,000 in merchandise in four heists. The deal from Bragg's office required him to attend five sessions with Manhattan Justice Opportunities, which provides social workers to council criminals convicted of both misdemeanors and felonies. Last month, he was arrested again after he and three others allegedly punched a 14-year-old boy and stole his cash and phone, according to the complaint.

A month earlier, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell complained on television that the NYPD is "arresting the same people over and over" due to bail reform that allows accused criminals to remain free while awaiting trial. She used as an example Wilfredo Ocasio, who, after serving time for rape and robbery, was arrested for petit larceny 33 times in three months.

And in January, Bragg courted controversy again by offering a six-month plea deal to Waseem Awadeh, one of four alleged gang members arrested for an antisemitic attack on Joseph Borgen, who was wearing a Yarmulke while walking to a pro-Israel event in Manhattan. The accused men pepper-sprayed him, and punched and kicked him, all captured on video, with Awadeh allegedly striking him with a crutch on four occasions.

"Alvin Bragg explicitly motivated his reforms to equalize the incarceration rate across racial groups," said Lott. "But while Bragg is reducing the penalties on Black criminals, he is ignoring that the victims of these Black criminals are overwhelmingly Black. For example, Blacks murdered about 90 percent of Black murder victims. But whatever Bragg's motivation, the bottom line is simple: if you make it less risky for criminals to commit crime, you will get more crime."