Trump found guilty: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg confirms he upheld the law

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thursday he “did his job” in securing guilty verdicts against former President Donald Trump.

“Our job is to follow the facts without fear or favor, and that’s what we did here,” he said at a press conference.

Bragg is the first prosecutor in U.S. history to convict a former president, capping off a risky yearlong legal approach to a complicated case. He declined to comment on whether his office would seek a prison sentence, adding the case against Trump was “ongoing.”

Bragg, who was in the courtroom when a 12-person New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, did not show any emotion when the verdict was read, according to reporters present.

TRUMP GUILTY IN MANHATTAN HUSH MONEY CASE

“While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial, and ultimately at this verdict, in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courthouse doors: by following the facts and the law without fear or favor,” he posted on X.

The verdict over what’s essentially an accurate recordkeeping case is an enormous win for Bragg.
Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was found guilty of falsifying business records in a case stemming from a payment to silence a porn star.

Trump has slammed Bragg ever since his office brought the first indictment against him in April 2023. Three other felony indictments against the former president were returned in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.

Following the verdict, Trump ticked off a list of complaints that he claimed prevented him from having a fair trial, which included allegations that Bragg brought the case against him as an effort to keep him out of the White House.

“The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5, by the people,” Trump said.

Republican lawmakers in both the House and Senate also denounced the guilty verdict, calling the case weak and politically motivated.

“Today’s verdict shows how corrupt and rigged the American justice system has become under Joe Biden,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said in a statement. “The facts are clear: this was a zombie case brought forward by Joe Biden’s allies in a desperate attempt to save Biden’s failing campaign and the verdict hinged on the testimony of a convicted felon who was disbarred for lying.”

The stakes were high for both Trump and Bragg because the trial will likely be the only criminal prosecution pending against the former president before November’s election.

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“Because it’s the first and maybe the only one we’ll see, the Manhattan case, clearly the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Trump, became a symbol of all of the criminal cases that Trump faces,” MSNBC columnist Jessica Levinson wrote following the verdict. “Like some grotesque legal version of Frankenstein’s monster, the case morphed into an amalgamation of all of the cases pending against Trump. It was at once, according to prosecutors, a documents case and an election interference case.  But one case should never have been seen as a referendum on whether the criminal justice system can hold Trump to account.”

Bragg, a Harvard Law School graduate who worked in the New York attorney general’s office as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, said while there were “many voices out there” commenting on the case, “the only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken.”