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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Incorrect. The DA's job is to exercise discretion and not spend taxpayer money on cases for political gain. The money wasted on the Trump case could have been used in countless other prosecutions of serious criminal acts.
Bragg at the same time he chose to go after Trump was also refraining from prosecuting a number of other crimes, as have many prosecutors in large cities since the pandemic. Look it up.
Bragg abused his discretion for political gain against Trump solely based on who Trump was. It's so obvious that to have to write this seems absurd.
I don't reply to ad hominems. Now offer your retort to Eli Honig's article.
That's too dumb and wildly untrue for reply.
I can see that. I hadn't considered that. Still, however, doing that is unethical. She has a duty to do her job, not issue bad rulings that make a mess of other ongoing cases and possibly set problematic precedent to make her job easier.
I would say what he did was criminal. He engaged in time theft for political gain, wasting thousands of hours and millions of dollars in state money (wages, experts, investigators, etc.) to engage in a political prosecution to aid his party and himself. He who engages in corruption is in violation of every atty ethics code. Just ask Rudy Giuliani. That Bragg was able to get an indictment and conviction is not exculpatory. The entire exercise was a waste of resources and works against the interest of NY State in maintaining the integrity of its prosecutors and judiciary. By doing what he did, Bragg has made NY appear a state where the prosecutor's office is politicized. By forcing it in front of Merchand, Bragg compelled the Court to endure a process that damages its perceived public integrity.
Bragg is no better in this regard than the fellow who pushed the Duke lacrosse case and lost his license as a result, or Giuliani. The only difference between he and Rudy is that Bragg could get away with what he got away with because the NY law was so poorly written he could offer a theory to the jury based on a predicate act he wasn't even required to divulge!
You might say that's just shrewd exploitation of the law. I think that is a fair defense of Bragg. I might make it as his ethics counsel myself. But I'm not sure it wins anything in the court of public opinion, which now perceives NY to have a crooked prosecutor and biased bench.
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You're using a lot of words to avoid answering a pretty simple question. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Bragg's prosecution of Trump was "political", whatever you mean by that, it's also clear now that Trump did the things that he was accused of, failed to convince the courts that they weren't a crime, and was convicted by a jury. You have conceded that all of the latter was fair. So this is *not* a case where Bragg wasted public resources chasing something that wasn't a crime. He spent public resources prosecuting, successfully, something that *was* a crime. What is the Pennsylvania ethics rule that says that a prosecutor should not prosecute an actual crime, one on which he can legitimately convict, because something was "political"? (I'm asking about Pennsylvania rules because I assume you're most familiar with them, but any state will do.)
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