IT'S NOT A BIRD, IT''S NOT A PLANE, IT'S ALVIN BRAGG!

For those of you unfortunates who do not live in Metropolis, you may fail to appreciate a tradition of Manhattan District Attorneys who have served long terms of office. Frank Hogan served for 31 years. The next elected district attorney Robert Morgenthau served for 34 years and he was succeeded by Cyrus Vance Jr. who served for 11 years. Not everybody appreciated everything each one of them did, but they were generally recognized as competent. 

But now we come to the present day and on January 1, 2022, our newest elected District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, proceeded to enrage a good chunk of law enforcement officials as well as civilians, by adopting policies that progressives had been urging. Indeed the governor threatened to unseat him. Bragg solved his immediate problems by surrendering his principles and abandoning the new policies.

He is now engaged in a scandal in which his office lost a major case against an allegedly dishonest cop by reason of Bragg's failure to make discovery available to the defendants. He is trying his best to change the subject in the press. Well, the subject in the press is changed, but not to his benefit.

While the Attorney General of the State of New York, Leticia James, (who basically has no prosecutorial powers) worked diligently to prove a string of illegal activities by Donald Trump and his organization, Bragg was indifferent. 

His predecessor, Cyrus Vance, was not.  Seeing the difficulty of putting together a solid case against the slippery former president, Vance used assets that were not, at least at first, official employees of the District Attorney's Office. One of them, Mark Pomerantz, a retired partner of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (my alma mater), together with a senior member of Vance's staff, Carey Dunne, developed a case against Trump based on a string of instances in which Trump, to advance the credit-worthiness of his properties, grossly overstated their value. District Attorney, Cyrus Vance said  "Let's go with it," but before the matter could be put to a grand jury, Vance's term ended, and Alvin Bragg took office on January 1, 2022.

 Because the theory developed by Pomerantz and Dunne ran jury risks against defendant Trump, Bragg flinched and refused to let the prosecutors continue. They were outraged but could not persuade Bragg to pursue an indictiment of Trump. 

So, when it came to Trump, Bragg did nothing whatsoever.

But Pomerantz refused to abandon history. He kept a diary, and when he saw that he could not persuade Bragg to prosecute the former president,  Pomerantz wrote a letter of resignation in which he told Bragg, 

"I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations … . His financial statements are false and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people. The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes – he did."

In that letter, Pomerantz also told Bragg that his predecessor Cyrus Vance had been intimately involved in the investigation, sat in on witness interviews, received regular reports about the progress of the investigation, and concluded that the facts warranted prosecution. Vance directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and seek an indictment of Mr. Trump as soon as reasonably possible

But Bragg killed the prosecution despite the Pomerantz team's assurance that they had evidence "sufficient to establish Mr. Trump's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt". Pomerantz added that while no case is perfect, and every jury case involves some risk, his team believed that a failure to prosecute presented greater risks of public confidence in the fair administration of justice than a bad jury verdict. This was especially true given the nature of this defendant. The Pomerantz team believed "the bedrock proposition that no man is above the law requires that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not certain."

Pomerantz concluded that for several reasons, a delay would make the prosecution ultimately impossible and "Mr. Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes. I have worked too hard as a lawyer, and for too long, now to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice. I therefore resign from my position as a special assistant district attorney, effective immediately."

Bragg still did nothing to prosecute Trump. 

But later that year Bragg learned that Simon and Schuster was going to publish a book entitled "People vs. Donald Trump," in which Pomerantz set out details of his frustration with Bragg's failure to pursue what he and his team saw as conduct that would lead to a Trump conviction. Bragg suddenly discovered that if and when the public learned those details, the world would see Bragg for what he was -- an empty suit.  So to change the subject, Bragg just last week announced that he was going to create a special grand jury to investigate the now-ancient hush money payment that Trump is alleged to have given to Stormy Daniels to hide his adulterous affair prior to his 2016 campaign.

From a NY prosecutor's point of view, the "Hush Money" case is a stinker. Without going into lengthy legal complications, there are two steps to it: the first is that the $130,000 was not paid directly by Trump. It was paid by Michael Cohen who was then reimbursed in 12 monthly "retainer payments.'' In New York, falsification of company books is a low-level crime and only becomes a meaningful felony if done in connection with another crime. Making a hush money payment by itself is not a crime in New York State, and the connected crime is a dubious one. Moreover, a leading prosecution witness is a felon who was convicted of perjury! 

But Braggadocio Bragg, now full of new-found prosecutorial piss and vinegar, wants the media to play up the Hush-Money announcement instead of focusing on his previous failure to pursue Trump. He seems to have discovered a newfound prosecutorial vigor. (Is there a new drug, a  prosecutorial Viagra that, until now, has been unknown to the general public?). To make his new-found red cape even more visible, Super- Bragg has taken a leaf from Trump's playbook and threatened to sue Pomerantz and Simon & Shuster.

It's not a bird, it's not a plane, it's not even a prosecutor. It's just Alvin tryin' to flap the arms of his empty suit jacket.

Pathetic.

Btw, Pomerantz will be on 60 Minutes tomorrow (Sunday). I have read the book. I can't wait.

A bientot.

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