Former president Donald Trump fired out three furious all-caps posts on his Truth 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.”
“As with all of our investigations, we will continue to apply the law evenly and fairly, and speak publicly only when appropriate,” he said.
On March 30, a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Mr Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, making him the first former president to ever face criminal charges. Prosecutors accuse him of attempting to cover up an illegal scheme to suppress negative stories about him in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.
Like all defendants facing criminal charges, Mr Trump was processed before appearing in court on Tuesday 4 April, with his fingerprints taken. However, he was not placed in handcuffs and a mugshot was not taken.
At his arraignment, Mr Trump pled not guilty to all charges before flying back to Mar-a-Lago in time to deliver a prime-time address at 8.15pm ET on Tuesday.
“No matter who you are, we cannot and will not normalise serious criminal conduct,” said Mr Bragg at a press conference that afternoon.
Throughout the prosecution, right-wing opponents have bombarded Mr Bragg’s office with claims of election interference or raised baseless conspiracy theories, including antisemitic and racist 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 racist 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 vote.
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 election 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 election.
“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 elections, 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 voters to cast their ballots “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 hate 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 presidential election. 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 appeared to be 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.
His attacks on the DA didn’t end after Mr Trump’s arrest and arraignment on 4 April.
In his primetime TV address at Mar-a-Lago that night, he railed against the charges, Mr Bragg and Judge Merchan.
“The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally leaked massive amounts of grand jury information,” he said to loud applause.
“For which he should be prosecuted, or at a minimum he should resign.”
He also targeted Mr Bragg’s wife and the “Trump hating-judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter work for Kamala Harris”.
Coming just hours after Judge Merchan warned Mr Trump to stop making threatening posts on social media that could inflame tensions or incite violence, the former president’s attacks on the DA could be unwise and he may find himself under a gag order.
This story was initially published on 19 March 2023, and updated on 4 April 2023 to reflect new developments
