‘By-the-Book’? Give Me a Break

With the speculation surrounding Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s anticipated indictment of Donald Trump approaching a climax, Politico’s Erica Orden treated readers to an absurd profile of Trump’s would-be prosecutor.

Bragg, Politico’s headline reads, is a “by-the-book” litigator with little appetite for theatrics. Indeed, America is about to be treated to a lesson in contrasts as “the low-key, politics-averse prosecutor prepares to take on the brash, mudslinging former president.”

Typically, no-nonsense “by-the-book” types tend not to make their first order of business rewriting that same book. In what Bragg retailed as his “Day One Policies and Procedures” memo, the prosecutor sought to revise the city’s criminal code. In the future, his office would decline to prosecute marginal infractions like resisting arrest, and he sought to reduce other disturbances of the peace including armed robbery to misdemeanor charges. But for a pronounced public outcry against his preferences, Bragg might have pursued these reforms, doubtlessly contributing to criminality that already plagues New York City.

Likewise, we might expect a no-nonsense prosecutor to try out what arch-conservative venues such as NPR and the New York Times charitably describes as a “novel” legal theory on a target of more modest stature than a former American president. The prosecution of a former president is itself uncharted waters, but that condition is compounded by applying a legal theory that lacks precedent to what is already an unprecedented event.

If Bragg loitered above the progressive political fray, as Orden insists, he might not have retailed his intention to do precisely what he’s doing to Trump during his political campaign for the office he presently occupies.

“Mr. Bragg said repeatedly during the campaign that he had sued Mr. Trump or his administration more than 100 times during his tenure at the attorney general’s office,” the Times wrote of this “potential Trump scourge” upon his ascension to office. When Bragg’s opponent conceded, the Associated Press led with speculation about how he would handle “the investigation of former President Donald Trump,” which Bragg’s predecessor declined to prosecute. Why? Because Bragg suggested on the campaign trail that his predecessor had dropped the ball. “This is obviously a consequential case, one that merits the attention of the DA personally,” the prosecutor told a Harlem audience in late 2020. The implication in this statement being that he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

Bragg is taking a lot of flack for mounting what looks to be a quixotic assault on Trump, with potentially disastrous consequences for the country’s politics and the public’s faith in the system’s capacity to mete out fair and impartial justice. It’s unsurprising that those in Bragg’s orbit would want to burnish their principal’s tarnished image. Reporters should not, however, allow themselves to serve as tools in that self-serving initiative.