<\/p>\n
Democrat Alvin Bragg was elected Tuesday as Manhattan\u2019s first Black district attorney, a position that will give him oversight of prosecutions and ongoing investigations involving former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Bragg, a civil rights lawyer and former federal prosecutor, defeated Republican Thomas Kenniff to join a growing wave of progressive, reform-minded prosecutors across the country.<\/p>\n
He will take over in January from the current district attorney,\u00a0Cyrus Vance Jr., who is retiring after a final term in which\u00a0he prosecuted\u00a0Harvey Weinstein\u00a0for rape\u00a0and brought\u00a0tax evasion charges against the Trump Organization and its longtime finance chief,\u00a0Allen Weisselberg.<\/p>\n
Trump himself remains under investigation by the office after Vance\u00a0led a multiyear fight to get access to the Republican\u2019s tax records.<\/p>\n
He and Bragg have history. As a top deputy to New York\u2019s attorney general in 2018, Bragg helped oversee a lawsuit that led to the closure of Trump\u2019s charitable foundation over allegations that he used the nonprofit to further his political and business interests.<\/p>\n
Kenniff, a defense attorney who was formerly a prosecutor and an Army judge advocate general, had faced insurmountable obstacles in the race. Democrats outnumber Republicans heavily in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Since its founding, the Manhattan district attorney\u2019s office has been run exclusively by white men, with its current and most recent former leaders the sons of prominent U.S. statesmen.<\/p>\n
Vance\u2019s father was former President\u00a0Jimmy Carter\u2019s secretary of state. The father of his predecessor,\u00a0Robert Morgenthau, was President\u00a0Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s treasury secretary.<\/p>\n
Bragg, meanwhile, grew up in Harlem during the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic. At age 15, a police officer stuck a gun in his face and wrongly accused him of being a drug dealer as he walked to buy groceries for his father. Bragg filed a complaint at his parents\u2019 urging, sparking an interest in the law.<\/p>\n
He has had a knife held to his throat. As an adult, he opened his home to a brother-in-law just released from prison. Sometimes, Bragg says, the warrant squad would show up looking for the brother-in-law, banging on the door and waking up his children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are my stories, but the important thing is that they are our stories,\u201d Bragg said. \u201cThey are lots of people\u2019s stories, and I think taking those stories and metaphorically, those people, with me to the D.A.\u2019s office is important in a symbolic way but also deeply meaningful in a very practical way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bragg, 48, spent the final days of his campaign participating in a rare judicial inquiry into the death of Eric Garner, whose pleas of \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d to police officers who hauled him to the ground in a chokehold because a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter protesters in 2014.<\/p>\n
Bragg called it the most \u201cemotionally significant\u201d case of his career.<\/p>\n
Bragg campaigned partly on a promise to change the culture of the D.A.\u2019s office. He said wants to \u201cshrink the system,\u201d declining to pursue many low-level offenses and look for alternatives to prosecuting small \u201ccrimes of poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n
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