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NEW YORK (AP) — Manhattan District Lawyer Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who oversaw the historic hush-money case in opposition to President Donald Trump, received Tuesday’s Democratic major as he seeks reelection.
Bragg defeated Patrick Timmins — a litigator, regulation professor and former Bronx assistant district lawyer — to advance to November’s basic election. About 70% of registered Manhattan voters are Democrats.
The primary-term incumbent will face Republican Maud Maron, who was a public defender for many years and beforehand ran for Congress and NYC’s Metropolis Council as a Democrat.
Bragg has lengthy been one of many nation’s most outstanding prosecutors, spotlighted in TV’s “Legislation & Order” and different reveals. The DA directs about 600 attorneys in one of many largest native prosecutors’ workplaces within the U.S.
He raised the workplace’s profile nonetheless additional by bringing the hush-money case. His predecessor, fellow Democrat Cyrus R. Vance Jr., spent years investigating varied Trump dealings however did not procure an indictment.
Bragg determined to deal with how and why porn actor Stormy Daniels was paid $130,000 to clam up about her claims of a 2006 sexual encounter with the married Trump. The cost was made, by means of the then-candidate’s private lawyer, weeks earlier than the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s firm information logged the cash as a authorized expense.
Trump denied any wrongdoing and any sexual involvement with Daniels. However a jury final yr discovered him responsible of 33 felony counts of falsifying enterprise information, the first-ever felony conviction of a former — and now once more — U.S. commander in chief.
Trump is interesting the decision. The Republican president has lengthy derided the case as a political “witch hunt,” and he has stored lambasting Bragg by social media as lately as March.
Bragg, 51, was a civil rights lawyer, federal prosecutor and high deputy to New York’s lawyer basic earlier than turning into DA. Raised in Harlem and educated at Harvard, he is the primary Black particular person to carry the publish.
His tenure had a rocky begin. Days after taking workplace in 2022, he issued a memo telling staffers to not prosecute some varieties of circumstances, nor search bail or jail time in some others. After criticism from the police commissioner and others, Bragg apologized for creating “confusion” and mentioned his workplace wasn’t easing up on severe circumstances.
The matter continued to animate his critics. Trump repeatedly branded Bragg “tender on crime,” and Timmins mentioned on his marketing campaign website homepage that the memo “has led to elevated crime and a notion of chaos within the subway and on our streets.”
Timmins — who has raised about $154,000 to Bragg’s $2.2 million since January 2022 — additionally pledged to do extra to staunch subway crime, hold circumstances from getting dismissed for failure to satisfy authorized deadlines, and prioritize hate crimes, amongst different issues.
Bragg’s marketing campaign emphasised his efforts to struggle gun violence, assist sexual assault survivors, prosecute hate crimes and go after unhealthy landlords and exploitative bosses, amongst different priorities.
His workplace, in the meantime, has been enmeshed in a string of high-profile circumstances in latest months.
The workplace is utilizing a post-9/11 terrorism regulation to prosecute UnitedHealthcare CEO killing suspect Luigi Mangione, misplaced a murder trial in opposition to Marine veteran and Republican trigger célèbre Daniel Penny in a case that stirred debate about subway security and self-defense, and retried former film mogul Harvey Weinstein on intercourse crimes prices.
Mangione, Penny and Weinstein all pleaded not responsible.
Bragg unexpectedly inherited the Vance-era Weinstein case after an appeals court docket ordered a brand new trial. In a jumbled final result, jurors this month convicted Weinstein on one high cost, acquitted him of one other and did not attain a verdict on a 3rd, lower-level cost — which Bragg goals to deliver to trial a 3rd time.
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