Federal prosecutors and former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. considered charging Donald Trump for covering up hush-money payments and both declined, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was undeterred.
Last year, he became the first prosecutor to secure a criminal indictment against a former president and on Monday the world’s attention will turn to Bragg as Trump’s trial on 34 counts of falsifying business records begins.
“The core is not money for sex,” Bragg said in a radio interview in December. “We would say it’s about conspiring to corrupt a presidential election and then lying in New York business records to cover it up.”
Trump has responded with personal invective, calling Bragg a “thug” and a “degenerate psychopath” who “hates the USA!”
A review of Bragg’s past work, however, shows a career with state and federal law enforcement and an interest in civil rights.
After growing up in Harlem, Bragg earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University and became an assistant state attorney general and an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Between government jobs, he taught law and was co-director of the Racial Justice Project at New York Law School. Bragg also represented the mother and sister of Eric Garner in seeking information about his death during an arrest by New York City police in 2014.
When he took office Jan. 1, 2022, Bragg became Manhattan’s first Black district attorney.
In 2022, Bragg’s office won convictions against two parts of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer. Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in prison after pleading guilty to 15 charges in a scheme to avoid taxes. Two Trump corporations were fined a combined $1.6 million for convictions of 17 felonies.
Bragg said company officials “have to play by the rules” and that Weisselberg used his position to get lavish perks such as a rent-free Manhattan apartment, multiple Mercedes Benz cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren – “all without paying required taxes.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James won a massive civil judgment this year against Trump for fraudulently inflating his assets on loan applications. Based on Weisselberg’s testimony in James’ civil suit against Trump, Bragg just won a perjury conviction against Weisselberg, who was sentenced Wednesday to another five months in jail.
The New York judge overseeing Donald Trump’s hush money trial will take center stage in the case Monday with jury selection kicking off in the historic criminal prosecution of the former president.
New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan is a seasoned jurist who is no stranger to Trump’s orbit. He has presided over the Trump Organization tax fraud trial, sentenced the former president’s close confidant Allen Weisselberg to prison over his role in the scheme and overseen former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s criminal fraud case.
But it’s the former president’s trial on charges that he illegally falsified business records over the reimbursement of hush money payments made before the 2016 election that will leave a lasting mark on Merchan’s long career atop the state-level trial court.
All eyes will be on the judge as he oversees the first trial Trump has in the four criminal cases brought against him by state and federal prosecutors last year. The presumptive Republican nominee has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Merchan has been described by observers as a “tough” judge, yet one who is fair, no matter who is before him.
Here’s what you need to know.
‘A man of his word’
Trump’s trial is likely to be a spectacle with wall-to-wall media coverage and a show of law enforcement to provide protection to the former president as he attends the proceedings, which are expected to last several weeks. In the lead-up to the start of the trial, Trump fanned the flames on social media with his views on the judge.
But in the courthouse, Merchan does not stand for disruptions or delays, attorneys who have appeared before him previously told CNN, and he’s known to maintain control of his courtroom even when his cases draw considerable attention.
“Judge Merchan was efficient, practical, and listened carefully to what I had to say,” Nicholas Gravante, the attorney who represented Weisselberg in his plea in the tax fraud case, said last year.
“He was clear in signaling his judicial inclinations, which helped me tremendously in giving Mr. Weisselberg informed legal advice,” Gravante said. “Judge Merchan was always well-prepared, accessible, and – most importantly in the Weisselberg matter – a man of his word. He treated me and my colleagues with the utmost respect, both in open court and behind closed doors.”
That sentiment was echoed by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a private practice attorney who previously worked as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, supervising cases Merchan presided over.
