In the end, it was Manhattan’s plodding and plainspoken district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who proved the pundits wrong and delivered what all the big-talking power brokers could not: the criminal conviction of ex-president Donald Trump for the corrupt and illegal business practices that helped him win the 2016 race for president.
Bragg does not swagger into a room the way so many New York lawyers and politicians do. He does not preen, pose, shout, or boast. Even when traveling with an armed security detail, he tends to arrive quietly, with the friendly, open and approachable style of a Sunday school teacher, which Bragg has been for years.
It is typical for New York’s men of power to huddle in dark bars and boozy back rooms, swapping gossip, cutting deals, and sipping booze. You’re more likely to find Bragg in Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church chatting about values, scripture, and how to make one’s way in the world with honesty and integrity. That, alone, makes him a different kind of fish in the shark tank of New York politics, which is stocked with bullies, boasters, bluster, and bullshit.
“This type of white collar prosecution is core to what we do at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office,” Bragg said after the conviction, repeating almost word for word what he’d said last April after Trump’s indictment and arrest. He was telling the truth: An investigation by NBC News showed that during Bragg’s first 15 months as DA, the office charged 166 felony counts for falsifying business records against 34 different people or corporations. As Bragg put it: “While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we........