Republicans upset with the indictment against Donald Trump have escalated their war against the prosecutor who indicted him, trying to embarrass him on his own turf in part by falsely portraying New York City as a place overrun with crime.
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Congressman Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican and staunch Trump supporter, will hold a hearing on the ground near the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Monday.
The committee’s Republican majority presents it as an examination of the Democrat’s “pro-crime, anti-victim” policy. One committee member, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., tweeted that Bragg has “turned NYC into a wasteland” and that “lawlessness is completely out of control.”
Democrats say the hearing is a partisan stunt designed to amplify conservative anger against Bragg, Manhattan’s first black district attorney.
New York authorities have urged Jordan to cancel the hearing. C-SPAN has refused to air it on television.
“This is simply a donation or in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign,” Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, told CNN on Friday. “This is truly a sham and it’s just unfortunate that at a time like this they use taxpayer money to stage this sham.”
Monday’s hearing is the latest salvo in Jordan’s weeks-long effort to use his powers in Congress to defend Trump from what he says is a politically motivated prosecution.
Jordan has sent letters to Bragg demanding testimony and documents, alleging that his office is subject to congressional scrutiny because it receives federal grants. He cited a former prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who previously oversaw the Trump investigation.
Bragg sued Jordan last week to try to block the subpoena, calling it a “blatant and unconstitutional attack” and a “transparent campaign to intimidate him” over the Trump case. A federal judge scheduled an initial hearing for Wednesday.
There will be a House hearing on Monday aimed at bolstering the argument that Bragg is so focused on Trump that he is allowing street crime to flourish.
Attacking New York City, and its largely Democratic leaders, for crime is an old trick for politicians representing rural and suburban constituencies. It’s a blow that may still resonate with some audiences, even though in reality the city’s violent crime rate remains substantially below the US average.
In 2022, Bragg’s first year in office, there were 78 homicides in Manhattan, a borough of 1.6 million inhabitants. This represented a decrease of 15% compared to the previous year. By comparison, in Palm Beach County, Florida, where one of Trump’s 1.5 million residents resides, there were 96 murders.
“People hear New York and think about crime, and that’s because they’ve been trained to think that way,” said Dr. Jeffrey Butts, director of the Center for Research and Evaluation at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “It’s not real. It’s just the stories people tell.”
“If you live in a predominantly small, white county in Iowa, you hear New York and you imagine all the scary movies and TV shows you’ve ever seen,” Butts said. “I think that’s what Congress is playing.”
For Bragg, scrutiny from Republicans, and even some Democrats, is nothing new.
A Harvard-educated former federal prosecutor, assistant state attorney general and civil rights attorney, Bragg won an eight-way Democratic primary and then rocketed to victory with 83% of the general election vote.
Shortly after taking office, Bragg drafted an internal memo that, among other things, said that his office would not prosecute certain low-level misdemeanors.
That led to some early clashes with New York Police Department leaders and also drew the attention of Republicans outside the city, who quickly turned Bragg into a poster child for Democratic permissiveness.
Republican Lee Zeldin, then representing eastern Long Island in Congress, made Bragg a focal point of his gubernatorial campaign, repeatedly vowing to remove the independently elected prosecutor from office.
Zeldin lost, but his rhetoric on crime reverberated through the suburbs, helping Republicans defeat Democrats in several key New York seats.
New York, in fact, was not immune to the nationwide surge in crime that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most crime categories in the city are still above 2019 levels. Several types of crime, including robberies, carjackings and muggings, rose in Manhattan during Bragg’s first year in office, though they’re back. to fall this year.
Despite focusing on Bragg, the House Judiciary Committee has not invited him to testify, nor is anyone from his office expected to participate. Instead, the committee plans to hear from at least six witnesses.
Among them: José Alba, a former convenience store employee arrested after stabbing to death an attacker in his store. Bragg’s office dropped the charges, but critics say they should have been dismissed sooner; Madeline Brame, who blames Bragg for seeking lengthy prison sentences for just two of the four people involved in the murder of her son; and Jennifer Harrison, a victim advocate whose boyfriend was murdered in New Jersey in 2005, outside of Bragg’s jurisdiction and long before he took office.
Bragg’s campaign sent an email to supporters Friday ridiculing the hearing as a “politically motivated farce.” justice.”
On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., called the planned hearing “a circus if ever there was one.”
Since taking power in the House, Republicans have launched a sweeping oversight agenda that delves into the confines of President Joe Biden’s administration, his family, and the workings of the federal government.
While carrying out oversight is a key function of Congress, the House GOP’s far-reaching investigations have often yielded more spark than substance. Long on the indictments, committees led by Jordan and others have been slow to produce findings that resonate and have sometimes veered off into conspiracy theories.
