On the menu today: The stars align for a news cycle focused on crime and the streets of New York — the much-deserved acquittal of Daniel Penny; the upcoming prosecution of the murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; and a move to dismiss the conviction of Donald Trump from earlier this year. As American cities gradually defenestrate their woefully destructive progressive prosecutors, a couple of Trump’s most ardent and high-profile foes start to look like tragic Shakespearian figures — willing to bend every rule, cut every corner, and sacrifice everything in pursuit of their target, only to see that obsessive single-mindedness enable him to slip away when it mattered most. Read on.
The Wreckage — er, Record of Alvin Bragg and Progressive Prosecutors
In September, the left-wing Center for American Progress (CAP) insisted, “Progressive prosecutors were not responsible for increases in violent or property crime before, during, or after the covid-19 pandemic.”
You see, no cash bail, dropping charges, charging the minimum crime and pursuing minimum sentences, declining to prosecute two-thirds of those arrested — none of that mattered, in their assessment; crime increases were entirely the result of “hyperlocal social, environmental, and economic conditions.” Uh-huh.
Boy, it’s just terrible luck that right after a bunch of progressive prosecutors got into office and enacted their own completely different philosophy toward attempting to convict those arrested for committing crimes, those “hyperlocal social, environmental, and economic conditions” kept generating a spike in violent and property crime! What a strange and awful recurring coincidence!
The University of Toronto study cited by CAP concluded, “No evidence supports the claim that prosecutors of any type are responsible for crime patterns.”
Really? No approach to prosecuting crimes has any effect on crime whatsoever? Well, if the progressives at CAP really believe the excuses they’re peddling, then I guess there’s no harm in stocking every American city with hard-as-nails let-me-at-them prosecutors and district attorneys, because there’s no way that will make any difference, right?
I mean, not even the prosecutors themselves go so far to make this argument. Milwaukee district attorney John Chisolm declared back in 2007: “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”
He’s willing to accept a couple murders in the name of his more compassionate philosophy. (You want to see something really depressing? Go through the Milwaukee Homicide Database and see how many homicides resulted in charges filed — not convictions, indictments — each year. The database goes back to 2014. The best year was 2017 with 61 percent of homicides with charges filed; the worst was 2015 with 32 percent with charges filed; and so far in 2024, just 41 percent of the city’s 140 homicides have had charges filed. No wonder Jeffrey Dahmer loved that city.)
Everyone will readily concede that prosecutorial decisions and philosophy aren’t the only factor in a jurisdiction’s crime rates. But it’s laughable to contend, as CAP and that University of Toronto study do, that they make no difference at all. And the citizenry in several of America’s big cities that are beset by terrible crime rates vehemently disagrees with the CAP perspective.
- In June 2022, 60 percent of voters supported the recall of district attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. (Please spare us the argument that the electorate of San Francisco fell victim to right-wing propaganda demonizing these prosecutors.)
- Across the bay, 65 percent of voters voted to recall Alameda County district attorney Pamela Price.
- Down in Los Angeles, almost 60 percent of voters preferred Republican-turned-independent Nathan Hochman over progressive Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón this November.
- Statewide in California, more than 68 percent of voters passed state Proposition 36, a measure to increase punishments for theft and drug crimes.
- In Illinois, Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx — Jussie Smollett’s best buddy! — is gone, replaced by Eileen O’Neill Burke, who upon taking office “announced that prosecutors must now seek pre-trial detention for anyone accused of certain crimes, particularly violent offenses, domestic violence cases and sex offenses or crimes against children.” (Smollett, by the way, had his conviction reversed by the Illinois supreme court last month, as Smollett’s lawyers effectively argued that his due-process rights had been violated; he had reached a deal with Foxx, and Cook County was bound by Foxx’s commitment not to file charges.)
- In 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis removed central Florida’s state attorney Monique Worrell, contending her “practices and policies have too often allowed violent criminals to escape the full consequences of their criminal conduct, thereby endangering the innocent civilians of Orange and Osceola counties.” The Florida state supreme Court upheld the suspension, 6-1. But Worrell won back her position in the 2024 election.
- Rafael A. Mangual of City Journal surveyed a lot of defeats for progressive prosecutors on this past Election Day: “In Tampa, Florida Democrat Andrew Warren, suspended by Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022 for his non-prosecution policies, lost his reelection bid against Republican State’s Attorney Susan Lopez. In Athens, Georgia — where the murder of Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant earlier this year stoked outrage — Kalki Yalamanchili won a landslide victory over incumbent District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who was elected on a reformist platform. In Phoenix, Tamika Wooten, who ran on pushing alternatives to incarceration and restorative justice, lost her bid to oust incumbent Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, a Republican. Law-and-order prosecutors also won in Macomb County, Michigan, and Kenosha County, Wisconsin.”
Back in 2021, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton wrote here at National Review, “The only good Soros prosecutor is a defeated Soros prosecutor.” Step by step, and with the occasional setback, we’re getting there.
But in the vast firmament of progressive prosecutors, perhaps the most famous and infamous is Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney Alvin Bragg.
Some of Bragg’s notoriety stems from his inclination to prosecute New Yorkers who defend themselves. Before there was Daniel Penny, there was bodega clerk Jose Alba. Before there was Jose Alba, there was Tracy McCarter. Just about the quickest way to get Bragg to want to prosecute an act of violence is for it to be committed in self-defense.
In a house editorial this week, the editors of National Review declare, “Justice has been done. The disgrace is that it was necessary for justice to be done in a courtroom. This case should never have been charged. New York City needs more Daniel Pennys, and it needs to rid itself of Alvin Bragg.”
New York had a jarring murder committed on camera recently; the perpetrator is caught, but our Andy McCarthy wonders, “Can Alvin Bragg — the paragon progressive prosecutor who seems to regard the streets of New York as if they popped out of Howard Zinn’s revisionist American history textbook — be trusted to prosecute a radical leftist for carrying out a ‘direct action’ against a capitalist oppressor? If I were the United States attorney in my old haunts, the Southern District of New York (SDNY) in Manhattan, I’d be looking to charge the suspect federally.”
But Bragg is most famous for his successful prosecution of Donald Trump — although now Bragg is fighting in court to not have those charges dropped. Andy writes that Trump’s argument for dropping the charges “picked up additional ballast when the federal prosecutor, Jack Smith, dismissed both indictments against Trump (in Washington, D.C., and south Florida). The Justice Department reasoned that this was required by long-standing Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) guidance that a sitting president may not be prosecuted.”
Bragg wants the sentencing and appeals process to effectively go into hibernation during Trump’s presidency, and then restart once he leaves office, presumably January 20, 2029 — when Trump will be 82 years old. Mark your calendars!
Democrats have a long list of scapegoats for the reelection of Donald Trump, and while Bragg may not belong atop the list, he’s not too far down, either. Ron DeSantis never had great odds in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, but a large chunk of the GOP rank-and-file lined up in support of Trump after Bragg’s indictment in April 2023. Of the four indictments of Trump, Bragg’s case went first, with the sketchiest argument and the one least relevant to Trump’s behavior in the Oval Office. Even ardent Trump critics such as David French and David Frum initially thought Bragg was assembling a particularly unconvincing criminal case against Trump. (As I wrote back then, “When even the David Frs are skeptical, you’re playing an intensely weak hand.”) Republicans were convinced that a bunch of progressive prosecutors were out to get Trump on anything they could, and independents never seemed all that convinced that their presidential choice should hinge on violations of New York State law while hiding secret payments to a porn star to be quiet about an affair.
Down in Georgia, the public learned Fani Willis had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she hired to run the cases against the former president, meaning that in New York, Trump was on trial for allegedly falsifying business records to hide an inappropriate sexual relationship, while in Georgia, Willis and Wade stood accused of allegedly falsifying an affidavit to hide an inappropriate sexual relationship.
Maybe the hell-bent-for-leather pursuit of Trump could be easier to justify if the streets of New York City were safe. But the Javert-like pursuit of Trump over old business filings while the city suffered from a post-pandemic crime surge added to the perception that the Democrats obsessed over anything and everything Trump did while ignoring serious and worsening problems in the lives of the ordinary citizenry.
The Harris campaign, particularly in the early weeks, was eager to showcase the contrast between “the prosecutor against the felon.” And yet, as the campaign wore on, it became clear the public — at least the voters that Kamala Harris needed to win — didn’t care.
So yeah, Alvin Bragg won the biggest case of his career. And all it cost him was everything else.
ADDENDUM: In New Jersey, they’re not banning books anymore, unless the books deserve it, and New York governor Kathy Hochul wants to fight inflation by throwing around more money. And you thought the Jets and Giants were the biggest disasters in the Big Apple region.