Meet the DA who’s set to go to war with Donald Trump

The man who haunts Donald Trump’s social media timeline these days is a Harlem-born former Sunday school teacher, a Harvard Law School graduate and a civil rights specialist.

He is a man who, just last year, studied the evidence his prosecutors had compiled about the former president’s suspicious business practices and decided to take a pass on a criminal prosecution.

A man now on the verge of making history if he concludes on a separate legal matter that Trump broke the law by reimbursing hush money paid to cover up an alleged affair with a porn star in the final days of the 2016 presidential election.

In Donald Trump, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has engaged with a street fighter, one who has warned of “death & destruction” should he be indicted on criminal charges.

The violent incantation came days after the discovery of a written death threat and a white powdery substance that had been mailed to Bragg’s office from Orlando, Fla., NBC News reported.

But Bragg, 49, doesn’t react well to threats.

In his campaign to become the first African American to hold the post, he noted in a speech to his Harlem church congregation that he had stared down the barrel of a gun six times in his life. Three times it was the finger of an NYPD officer resting on the trigger.

After the first such instance, he learned with the help of his church pastor how to file a civilian complaint against the police force.

“That was the beginning of my advocacy,” Bragg said.

Trump and his Republican backers have described Bragg, a Democrat, as “radical” and “racist.” They have accused him of bias and of running a politically motivated campaign to prevent Trump from returning to the White House in the 2024 election.

Bragg has failed to respond to the harsh criticisms of his office and its work, or the volley of unkind words that have been cast in his direction. But he has in the past made no claim to being impartial when it comes to one of Manhattan’s most famous sons.

He did in fact boast as he was running for office in 2021 that in a previous position with the New York state attorney general’s office, he was responsible for “leading the charge against the racist policies of the Trump administration.”

As head of the Social Justice Division, he oversaw a lawsuit to overturn an executive order barring people from majority Muslim countries from entering the United States, Trump’s so-called Muslim Ban.

He also helped bolster legal protections for undocumented immigrants at risk of deportations in “sanctuary cities,” where law enforcement can refuse co-operation with federal immigration authorities.

He declined last year to indict Trump personally for falsifying business records when he took up his current post — a decision that led two senior prosecutors to resign in protest.

But he signed off on charges of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy against Trump associate Steve Bannon last September and celebrated the conviction last December of the Trump Corp. on charges of tax evasion that resulted in fines of $1.6 million (U.S.), calling the latter “a case about greed and cheating.”

Bragg’s many Republican detractors, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another potential presidential aspirant, have suggested his political campaign to become district attorney was financed by George Soros, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor and billionaire who has used his fortune to support progressive political causes around the world, as well as the U.S. Democratic Party.

In fact, Soros donated $1 million to Color for Change, a group that supports progressive criminal justice policies and candidates, but he only gave the money several days after the group endorsed Bragg’s candidacy, the New York Times reported. The group spent $500,000 to help Bragg’s election.

Bragg’s election victory speech in November 2021 suggests that he is guided not necessarily by a burning desire to blunt Trump’s political hopes, as Republican supporters of the former president would suggest, but by a search for justice in its most basic forms.

“The fundamental role of a district attorney is to guarantee both fairness and safety,” he said.

Introduced as “a son of Harlem,” Bragg recalled walking the community with his parents, going to school and to church, before going away to Harvard University to study law.

After being educated at one of the country’s top law schools, Bragg returned to the neighbourhood where he had been raised, working as a civil rights lawyer, a federal prosecutor, a state prosecutor and a professor of law.

In the latter position, he represented the family of 43-year-old Eric Garner at an inquiry into his July 2014 death at the hands of the NYPD, while also running for election.

Somehow, he also found the time in his days to teach Sunday school and coach a little-league baseball team.

In Bragg’s telling of the story, his connection to his community make him more sensitive to the needs and concerns of its people.

He recounted in his victory speech that when the COVID-19 pandemic occurred and people were required by public health regulations to wear face masks, his son confided that he was terrified to cover his face.

“I’m concerned a police officer will think I’m a robber and shoot me,” the boy said.

“To sit here two and a half years later, for that young man to know that his father is in charge of fairness and safety in Manhattan makes me happy.”

Allan Woods is a Montreal-based staff reporter for the Star. He covers global and national affairs. Follow him on Twitter: @WoodsAllan

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