Prosecutor Alvin Bragg attended a fundraiser for a group that sought to exclude Trump from the ballot
The summary describes the controversy surrounding Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who attended a fundraiser for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) along with filmmaker Spike Lee, known for his critical views of former President Donald Trump. The event occurred a year after Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges and amidst ongoing debates over Bragg’s handling of the case. Bragg has been accused by Trump’s supporters of political prosecution, especially given the questionable legal basis of using an alleged minor infraction to elevate charges to multiple felonies, which Trump was swiftly convicted of by a Manhattan jury. It was unclear who paid for Bragg’s attendance at the fundraiser. The LDF, supported by figures linked to George Soros and active in anti-Trump legal actions, has faced criticism for its extreme tactics, including efforts to prevent Trump from appearing on ballots and being reinstated on social platforms, actions they deem a threat to public safety. The involvement of key figures with close political ties adds to the controversy surrounding Bragg’s participation and the perceived political motivations behind the prosecution of Trump.
A year before former President Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felonies, and a month after Trump was indicted, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was attending a fundraiser for a group that wants Trump’s name off the ballot alongside a man who has likened Trump to Adolph Hitler.
In May 2023, Bragg attended the main fundraiser for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), which has been on the front lines of legal efforts to keep Americans from being able to hear from, and vote for, Trump. He was pictured alongside film director Spike Lee, who has said Trump “will go down in history with the likes of Hitler” and that both Trump and “all his boys” are “going down on the wrong side of history.”
Bragg has come under fire by Trump’s supporters for what they characterize as a political prosecution of the former president. Bragg used a dubious and unproven out-of-jurisdiction crime to transform an alleged paperwork misdemeanor into 34 felonies, all of which a Manhattan jury quickly convicted the former president of. His attendance at a fundraiser will likely only fuel allegations that Trump was targeted only because he’s the Republican nominee for president.
The George Soros-backed district attorney’s prosecution of Trump was in keeping with the aggressive rhetoric of the legal group, which is also supported by the Soros family.
Jonathan Soros, the son of George Soros, who has spent heavily on district attorney races including Bragg’s, is on the board of the group, as is the wife of Matthew Colangelo, who left a top role in Joe Biden’s Department of Justice to work for Bragg on the Trump case. Colangelo’s wife, Anne Small, is listed as a top sponsor at the event, donating at least $25,000.
It is unclear who exactly paid for Bragg to attend the fundraiser. His office said he was not an official guest of Lee, but did not respond to questions regarding the anti-Trump mission of the group.
The NAACP LDF has used extreme tactics to keep Americans from being able to hear from, and vote for, Trump. When Colorado sought to simply take Trump off the ballot, the fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the move, saying Trump had “engaged in an insurrection.”
When every member of the Supreme Court, including its most liberal justices, said that this was unconstitutional, the group’s president, Janai Nelson, called it a “disturbing and dangerous pattern of judicial overreach” that threatened “our multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy.”
It also blasted Facebook for allowing him on the platform by saying the company was not legally “compelled” to reinstate him and saying being able to hear from a former president “endangers” the public. It called allowing Trump on the platform a “reckless, unjustifiable, and irresponsible decision.”
Essence, a black-oriented magazine, reported on the 2023 fundraising event by saying that money raised for the group would go towards fighting Trump “in the courtroom and beyond.”
Bragg claimed that Trump violated federal campaign finance law by not filing a report with the Federal Election Commission saying he paid a porn star to keep silent about an affair, arguing that the move was campaign-related. That’s despite there being no precedent for campaign finance law being interpreted in this way, the federal government declining to charge Trump for it, and Bragg having no authority to charge federal crimes.
The law-and-order approach to President Trump — whose alleged crimes had no identifiable victim — is in marked contrast to the usual philosophies of Bragg and the NAACP, which typically view the harsh enforcement of law and order as racist against blacks.
In May, the NAACP LDF issued a “Statement Honoring George Floyd,” a violent felon who served only a short prison stint for robbing a pregnant woman at gunpoint. It used Floyd’s death to propose replacing police with a “Corps of Unarmed Civilian Responders,” and criminal punishment with “Restorative Justice Programs.”
Bragg’s prosecution of Trump failed to separate itself from politics in the eye of the public. A recent poll found that 47 percent of Americans think the charges against Trump were politically motivated, compared to just 38 percent who say they were not.
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