Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former President Donald Trump secures Bragg a place in history as the first prosecutor to ever charge a former President of the United States. But whether Bragg will go down in history as a footnote or pioneer will be determined solely by whether he secures a conviction—and the path to conviction is a challenging one legally.
Bragg is a surprising come-from-behind winner in the field of potential prosecutors who might charge Trump. Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fanni Willis appeared to be closest to indictment and, in the view of many legal commentators, myself included, seemed to have the strongest cases. Certainly, she has had more time to work up her case than has Bragg, which is part of the concern over Bragg’s sudden prosecutorial boldness.
Recall that Bragg punted on a fully matured three-year long criminal investigation into Trump’s financial crimes, which his predecessor Cyrus Vance had fought up to the U.S. Supreme Court twice on the issue of seeking Trump’s tax records from Mazars accounting firm. Bragg’s decision so angered the lead prosecutors on the case that two of them resigned. One of them—Mark Pomerantz—wrote a scathing book about his disagreements with Bragg’s decision to decline to charge Trump.
Source: The Daily Beast
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