House GOP takes its fight with Alvin Bragg to New York City

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold a hearing in New York City next week focused on violent crime in the Big Apple, the latest iteration of the House GOP zeroing in on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) after a grand jury he empaneled indicted former President Trump.

The field hearing, titled “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan,” is scheduled for April 17 at 9 a.m. at the Javits Federal Building in Manhattan. The committee has not yet announced witnesses.

The panel said the hearing “will examine how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s pro-crime, anti-victim policies have led to an increase in violent crime and a dangerous community for New York City residents.”

A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s office called the scheduled hearing a “political stunt.”

“Don’t be fooled, the House GOP is coming to the safest big city in America for a political stunt,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement. “This hearing won’t engage in actual efforts to increase public safety, such as supporting national gun legislation and shutting down the iron pipeline.”

“The Manhattan D.A.’s Office welcomes public safety conversations. We have them every day with our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners,” they added.

The announcement comes less than one week after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts for his alleged role in organizing hush money payments for adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Even before the indictment was official — Trump predicted he would be arrested days before — Republicans started aiming their fire at Bragg, arguing that he is a rogue prosecutor driven by politics. They also sought to tie him to billionaire George Soros amid revelations that a PAC Soros is connected to supported Bragg’s 2021 campaign.

Bragg has said his office is merely enforcing the law, noting it has brought dozens of cases for falsifying business records, which it accuses Trump of doing. His office has also hit back at GOP efforts to oversee its work, calling it a “dangerous usurpation” by Congress.

“What neither Mr. Trump nor Congress may do is interfere with the ordinary course of proceedings in New York State,” Leslie Dubeck, general counsel for Bragg’s office, wrote in a letter late last month.

On Monday, the spokesperson for the DA’s office listed statistics from the New York Police Department that show murders, shootings, burglaries and robberies are lower now than they were at this time last year. They also compared the 2022 murder rate in New York City to that of Columbus, Ohio — the home state of House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R).

“If Chairman Jordan truly cared about public safety, he could take a short drive to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, or Toledo in his home state, instead of using taxpayer dollars to travel hundreds of miles out of his way,” the spokesperson said.

Republicans have described Bragg as a soft-on-crime prosecutor. Bragg, a progressive, issued a “Day One” memo in January 2022 that told his office to reserve jail time for the most serious crimes, and to not prosecute some low-level offenses — including misdemeanors related to arrest for noncriminal offenses. The next month, however, he reversed those policies.

A trio of House GOP chairman sent Bragg a letter last month requesting that he sit for a transcribed interview about his investigation into Trump and the hush money payments. Jordan has since expanded that probe, requesting testimony from former prosecutors on the investigation and one of the leading prosecutors on the Trump case.

Updated at 3:22 p.m.