Towards the enemy image of the right: this is the man to impeach Trump

In all likelihood, Alvin Bragg will go down in history as the first US attorney to indict a former president. A role that should make Manhattan’s first black chief prosecutor internationally known as an opponent of ex-President Donald Trump and make him an enemy of the American right.

Despite his membership in the Democratic Party, the 49-year-old is not too interested in political intrigue. Growing up in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood in the 1980s, Bragg experienced crime himself: “Before I was 21 years old, a gun was pointed at me six times: three times by police officers and three times by non-cop officers. had a knife on my neck, a semi-automatic pistol on my head and a murder victim on my doorstep.”

The father of the family wrote this to his associates two days after he took office as a prosecutor in January 2022. After narrowly winning the election, the Harvard graduate introduced his new agenda with the memo, which earned him a lot of internal criticism and opposition from the police: the order to spend more resources on the prosecution of serious violent crimes and less on crimes related to drug or prostitution use.

Criticized for embarrassment towards Trump

The chief prosecutor has also been criticized in recent months for being too hesitant towards Trump. Just over a year ago, two senior prosecutors in Bragg’s office, Mark Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, resigned after the chief prosecutor decided not to indict Trump in an investigation.

Pomerantz eventually published a book portraying Bragg as unwilling to sue the ex-president. The rather media-shy Bragg replied in one of his few TV interviews: “I’ll bring hard cases when they’re done.” And Mark Pomerantz’s case wasn’t done yet.

This hurdle appears to have been cleared by Trump’s impending indictment for hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels – likely to create a political storm from the American right for Bragg personally and his employees.

This portrays Bragg as a Democrat who is soft on criminals and would rather abuse his power to avoid political opponents than to ensure law and order. Indirect campaign support for Bragg from conservative-hated American investor George Soros provides additional ammunition.

Trump himself had already called Bragg a “racist”. And the call for his supporters to protest the indictment — and against Trump’s alleged arrest — was a fatal reminder for many Americans of Trump’s rhetoric just before the Capitol stormed on January 6, 2021.

As security around the Manhattan courthouse was already tightened, Bragg averted his colleagues through turbulent weeks and months. In a letter to staff quoted in the US media, he promised that all threats against the prosecutor’s office would be investigated: “We will not tolerate any attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York”.

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(t-online/dpa)