Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg apparently believes he’s immune to investigation. House Republicans are traveling to New York City to hold a hearing on Bragg’s “pro-crime” policies that include no bail or reduced bail for dangerous offenders, and a refusal to prosecute many crimes, including prostitution and fare evasion.
“If Bragg can spend resources indicting President Trump, he should be able to address the soaring crime in NYC,” said Judiciary Committee member Andy Biggs.
Bragg shot back. “Don’t be fooled,” a spokeswoman said in a statement. “The House G.O.P. is coming to the safest big city in America for a political stunt.”
The irony of ironies. Here’s Bragg pulling the political stunt of indicting Donald Trump — a move that even many leftists believe is based on trumped-up charges — accusing the House Judiciary Committee of engaging in a “political stunt” for investigating the crime wave in New York City.
And as far as New York being the “safest big city in America,” major crimes rose 22% in New York in 2022. So murders and shootings are down — which means you’re likely to “only” be mugged, assaulted, and robbed.
The Judiciary Committee hearing is scheduled for next Monday at a federal office building in Lower Manhattan not far from where Mr. Trump, in an extraordinary scene last week, surrendered to the authorities and pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records.
An announcement on the committee’s website did not list any of the witnesses who are expected to testify, but the session’s title did offer a broad sense of the subject matter: “Victims of Violent Crime in Manhattan.”
“New Yorkers don’t need to take public safety advice from Jim Jordan, whose ‘tough on crime’ solution is to defund the DOJ and FBI,” New York Rep. Jerry Nadler wrote in a message on Twitter.
Calling out a political opponent for using the exact same tactics you are using to discredit a presidential candidate might be seen as an egregious breach of etiquette. And Bragg’s office went even further, making the fantastical comparison of safety in New York with safety in Ohio cities near Rep. Jordan’s district.
In her statement on Monday, Mr. Bragg’s spokeswoman took a swipe at Mr. Jordan, saying that Manhattan had a lower murder rate than Columbus, Ohio, which is adjacent to the district Mr. Jordan represents. (Columbus had 140 homicides last year; New York City, with more than eight times as many people, had 433.)
“If Chairman Jordan truly cared about public safety,” she said, “he could take a short drive to Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, or Toledo in his home state.”
As a federal officer, Jordan couldn’t do anything about crime in Ohio even if he wanted to. But Bragg can do a lot about crime in New York City. And he’s not doing anything. And that’s why there will be a hearing in a Manhattan office building to highlight Bragg’s idea of “justice.”
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