This reluctant prosecutor just made Donald Trump a felon

NEW YORK — Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg won more than just the case when a jury found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts.

The Harlem Democrat, who at times seemed like a reluctant participant in a trial he launched, secured a place in history as the first prosecutor to land the conviction of an American president.

It’s easily one of the most dazzling feats of jurisprudence the nation has seen — and the sort of accomplishment that could launch him on a political rocket ship to Washington. Indeed, the conviction Thursday drew immediate praise and gratitude from Democrats, who see the former president as a unique threat to democracy — while also intensifying attacks from his supporters and the freshly convicted candidate himself, who has called the case a “witch hunt” and a “sham trial” organized by President Joe Biden.

Yet there were no Champagne baths in Bragg’s office after the verdict. When the jury’s decision was announced in Manhattan Criminal Court, Bragg stuck to the apolitical tone he has adopted throughout the prosecution. In public, he described the case as standard practice. In private, he acknowledged to his staff the enormity of what they’d taken on — and said it was time to get back to business as usual.

“I know that the trial that has just concluded disrupted the ability of our staff, our witnesses and victims, and our law enforcement partners to navigate the Office and courthouse,” Bragg wrote in an emailed memo obtained by POLITICO, thanking his team for working with a global spotlight on their backs.

“As we close this chapter,” he added, “I want to assure you that we will do everything in our power to restore normal operations as quickly as possible, while prioritizing your safety first and foremost.”

For Bragg personally, a sense of “normal” is unlikely to come any time soon.

The partisan debate over whether prosecuting Trump was the right thing to do politically will only continue until Election Day. And the case itself will continue until Trump’s sentencing, scheduled for July 11, where he faces up to four years in prison. Months of appeals will almost certainly follow.

Bragg, as much as he’s sought to avoid seeming like a politician, will be forced to reckon with his future. He’ll have to run for reelection next year on a platform that is sure to include his conviction of Trump as its centerpiece. Aides, allies and New York Democratic leaders say they expect the Manhattan Democrats who elected him to know and appreciate the case he won, even if he himself does not want to — pardon the pun — brag about it.

“Alvin Bragg is going to run on a history-making, career-making prosecution,” said Maya Wiley, a progressive legal commentator who ran for mayor in 2021. “The first ever of a former U.S. president. Period. That’s a hell of a record to run on on its own.”

Even if Bragg himself shies away from using the case politically, out of fear of inflaming partisan backlash, other members of this party will be eager to, said Basil Smikle, a political scientist and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. “For Democrats, this is an opportunity to unite behind him and talk about how this is a man who does care about accountability,” he said.

That’s a clear message for a prosecutor who had a rough start, politically. He has been assailed by tough-on-crime conservatives, after laying out his agenda of declining to prosecute certain lower-level offenses. Crime rates in Manhattan have trended down over his time in office, but are still above pre-pandemic levels, making Bragg an easy target.

Bragg was also criticized by many Democrats for not quickly bringing a criminal conspiracy case against Trump that assistants in the office had been building. Prosecutors on that case publicly resigned, and it took Bragg another year to bring this separate Trump indictment about hiding hush money payments to benefit his campaign.

The case earned detractors, even from some Trump critics, who argued it was weak, in part for relying on federal laws to escalate misdemeanor charges to felonies.

The conviction, Bragg political adviser Richie Fife told POLITICO, proves it was the right case.

“Alvin doesn't spend time worrying about the Twitter lawyers or the outside noise,” he said.

Bragg has focused on reducing gun violence and making Manhattan safer and fairer, he said, and is now in an even stronger political position than he was before, Fife said. “He focuses on doing the right thing, the right way, and for the right reasons — speaking in the courtroom, with the politics taking care of itself."

The politics, of course, includes the escalated ire of Trump loyalists who have threatened Bragg’s life.

Trump himself has called Bragg a “Soros-backed prosecutor” — seizing on the fact that Bragg’s campaign was boosted by a PAC funded by liberal donor and Republican bogeyman George Soros — and argued he was pressured into taking the case.

It will be overturned on appeal, argued New York State Republican Chairman Ed Cox. But in the meantime, “it raises President Trump’s stature as a candidate. He is now in a special category as a martyr to injustices that have embarrassed us around the world that make us look like a banana republic,” he said in an interview. This is what (Russian President) Putin does. This is what (Chinese President) Xi does. And we are now doing the same.”

Democrats, by and large, are less confident about the case’s impact on the election.

“For those of us amazed with how this guy gets away with murder, figuratively, it’s a moment of joy when justice finally catches up with you,” said Luis Miranda, a New York-based Democratic consultant. “But that’s not what is going to elect (Trump) or reelect Biden.”

After all, “There’s no playbook for this,” said Yvette Buckner, another New York Democratic consultant. “After people get over the initial shock and awe of the first president being convicted on 34 counts, people are going to have to sit and think — do they really want to have a convicted felon running our country?”

Asked for his response Thursday night to criticism of the case, Bragg allowed himself a pat on the back, talking about training in the law, coming up through the state Attorney General’s office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to lead the esteemed Manhattan District Attorney’s office.

“My response, again,” he said, “is I did my job.”