All eyes on the Manhattan DA

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Mar 20, 2023 View in browser   By Calder McHugh Presented by Action Now Initiative With additional reporting from Joanne Kenen Police officers move barricades near the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse ahead of former President Donald Trump's anticipated indictment. | Wesley Parnell for POLITICO INDICTMENT WATCH — No former president has ever been charged with a crime. But a grand jury indictment of former President Donald Trump could break that streak this week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to bring a criminal charge against Trump for his involvement with a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Law enforcement officials from the NYPD and U.S. Secret Service, along with other court officials, met this afternoon at NYPD headquarters to game plan for the politically charged indictment, according to POLITICO reporting. Trump will be finger-printed and his mug shot will be taken, though he won’t have a “perp walk” and may not be handcuffed. After Trump called for protests in New York on Saturday on Truth Social, the NYPD today erected steel barricades outside Manhattan Criminal Court. The indictment is expected on Wednesday evening. In the run-up to the expected indictment, Trump allies in the House GOP attacked Bragg’s motivations for pursuing legal action against the former president. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called on Bragg to testify in front of Congress (though if the House Judiciary does subpoena Bragg, it’s unlikely he’d show up to answer questions). “This is a Soros-backed, crazy, left-wing prosecutor … and he is doing this purely political sham,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told POLITICO Playbook. Liberal billionaire George Soros’ Color of Change PAC donated at least $500,000 to Bragg’s 2021 election campaign, as part of an effort to elect progressive district attorneys around the country who want to end mass incarceration. The situation is complicated by Trump’s 2024 election campaign. There is widespread debate over whether the legal jeopardy will help Trump’s chances in a GOP primary or hurt them, and his 2024 competitors are already feeling the pressure to weigh in. One likely 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has already been attacked by Trump allies for not jumping to his defense. DeSantis today argued, “I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA.” To learn more about the Manhattan DA and the situation on the ground, Nightly spoke with Julia Marsh, an editor for POLITICO New York and former City Hall bureau chief and legal correspondent for the New York Post. This conversation has been edited. Give readers some background on Bragg. Where does he come from? How did he win the Manhattan DA’s race in 2021? What has he done since he took office, and what has his reception been like? Alvin Bragg is a career prosecutor who got his start as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York before moving to the state attorney general’s office, where he served as a deputy chief. There, he brought lawsuits including one against the Donald J. Trump Foundation that concluded with Trump paying a $2 million settlement. He grew up in Harlem and still lives there. During the campaign for district attorney in 2021, he frequently talked about getting held up at gunpoint when he was a kid during the crack cocaine epidemic, and won a crowded Democratic primary with eight candidates largely on a message of progressive criminal justice reform policies. While that message resonated with largely liberal primary voters, Bragg’s so-called “Day 1 Memo” rolling out his plan to pull back on prosecutions — even reducing some felony charges, including commercial robberies — drew immediate criticism, including from the widow of a cop who was shot and killed during a police call in January, his first month on the job. The city’s new police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, also criticized his approach, leading to a sort of apology tour where Bragg promised to prosecute crimes including gun cases. This is all against a backdrop of continued rising crime in NYC. What about on the issue of Trump? Have his actions or comments indicated how aggressively he intends to pursue charges? And has his office diverged from his predecessors in terms of how they’ve handled the former president? Trump’s case was not a major issue during the campaign. During Bragg’s second month in office, two leading prosecutors on the Trump case resigned following reports that Bragg didn’t believe they had enough evidence to charge the former president. But by December, Bragg had secured a conviction against the Trump Organization in a criminal tax fraud trial. A month later, former Trump Org. executive Allen Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in jail and five years of probation after pleading guilty to a tax fraud scheme. What preparations is the city or Bragg’s office now undertaking before a potential indictment? POLITICO reported that the NYPD convened a meeting at its lower Manhattan headquarters this afternoon with the DA’s office, U.S. Secret Service and court officials to plan for security around the potential indictment. Already today there are additional police officers and court officers outside the courthouse and metal barricades have been installed. A Manhattan-based group called the New York Young Republicans Club is holding a protest today in lower Manhattan that they stressed would remain peaceful. What happens next? After he’s indicted and processed, what are next steps in this case? I expect it’ll be a little anticlimactic — likely they’ll just set a return court date on preliminary pre-trial issues. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @calder_mchugh.   A message from Action Now Initiative: Protecting our seniors means protecting Medicare. Each year, big insurance companies abuse Medicare Advantage by overcharging seniors and taxpayers by billions. Now, there is a proposal to crack down on fraud and waste by insurance companies in Medicare Advantage. It’s a start – but it’s not enough. We can’t afford to wait. We already know the price of a delay – $23 billion in 2023 alone. Congress: Stop fraud and abuse. Protect our seniors and their benefits.   From the Health Desk 'OVERPOLICED AND UNDERPROTECTED' — Last summer, an editor at POLITICO Magazine gave me a great offer, writes Nightly contributor Joanne Kenen, the Commonwealth Fund Journalist in Residence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Write a deep dive piece about a topic in women’s health that doesn’t get a lot of attention. I chose domestic violence. And yes, it’s a health problem, not just a law enforcement problem. And the health system — doctors, nurses, hospitals and clinics as well as the public health system — do a pretty lousy job of detecting abuse, and addressing survivors’ physical, emotional, legal and financial needs. Domestic violence is a leading cause – some experts told me it’s the leading cause — of homelessness among women. Since writing that piece, I’ve had a chancex to talk again with some of the women I interviewed last summer. And this month I’ve moderated two sessions on it at conferences — one was part of a full day meeting on this topic held at the USC Annenberg School’s Center on Health Reporting. I learned a lot more, some of it quite shocking. All those stories you’ve been seeing about the maternal mortality crisis (which is particularly severe among Black women, of all economic strata)? It’s even worse than you heard. That’s because many states don’t include homicide, suicide or overdose in their maternal mortality figures — even though pregnancy and post-partum are high risk, including for murder. Maternal mortality deaths from hemorrhage, infection and that kind of thing are reviewed by OB/GYN panels — but those doctors aren’t experts in homicide so they just don’t count them, Jacquelyn Campbell, a national expert in intimate partner violence at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing told me. Similar percentages of men and women report some form of domestic violence — but the really serious physical harm and homicide is overwhelmingly women. Many states — in fact, most states — don’t require judges to have any kind of training in domestic violence, even though these cases end up in their courts and they are extraordinarily fraught and complicated, often involving kids. And — this is less surprising, but still worse than I thought — not only does the law enforcement system blame the victim, it sometimes incarcerates her. Survivors are “overpoliced and underprotected,” as one conference speaker put it. They are at risk of eviction, because their abusive partner wasn’t on the lease, or because the woman called 911 so often that she was a “nuisance” (which Matthew Desmond wrote about in “Evicted,” a 2016 book that follows eight families struggling to pay rent during the 2008 financial crisis). Their kids get taken away because they are exposed to violence. “The system,” said Krista Colon of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, “doesn’t treat it as a crime.”   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     What'd I Miss? — Biden issues first veto: President Joe Biden vetoed his first bill earlier today, blocking the repeal of a Labor Department rule that permitted retirement investing tied to environmental and social goals. The veto was expected, after the Biden administration fought Republican-led efforts to pass the rollback three weeks ago. The House and Senate votes attracted support from three Democrats, including Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — moderates who are up for reelection next year. — Four more Oath Keepers convicted of Jan. 6 felonies: Four more members of the Oath Keepers were convicted this afternoon of conspiracy to obstruct Congress’ Jan. 6 proceedings, bringing the number of members of the group found guilty by juries of felonies related to the Capitol attack to more than a dozen. Jurors found Sandra Parker, Laura Steele, Connie Meggs and William Isaacs each guilty of the most significant charges they faced: conspiracy to obstruct Congress’ proceedings, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy to prevent a federal officer from discharging duties. — Biden will release Covid-19 origin intelligence: Biden signed into law today a bill to declassify intelligence on the origins of Covid-19, offering the public a chance to review information that government agencies say is inconclusive. The legislation, called the Covid-19 Origin Act of 2023, which passed the Senate and House with unanimous support earlier this month, orders the Director of National Intelligence to declassify within 90 days of enactment all information relating to potential links between China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology and Covid-19. The director is then to submit the information in a report to Congress.   A message from Action Now Initiative:   Nightly Road to 2024 FIELD GUIDE — The 2024 Republican presidential field is far from set. But POLITICO’s Steve Shepard is already handicapping the candidates: who’s in, who’s out, how they’ll win, how they’ll lose. FINE LINE — As a Republican candidate for president, Nikki Haley introduces herself as the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. She says that it’s time for a new generation of leaders and that the best way to accomplish that is to put a “badass woman” in the White House. At the same time, Haley has underscored that she does not believe there are “glass ceilings” limiting women. She rejects identity politics as a form of divisiveness and “woke self-loathing.” As she campaigns nationwide, she is at once seeking to accentuate her differences from white male candidates and offer reassurances that they are not impediments to achieving success, the Washington Post reports. AROUND THE WORLD Far-left lawmakers hold papers reading: "64 years. It is no," "appointment in the street," "we are continuing," at the National Assembly in Paris. | Lewis Joly/AP Photo SKIN OF HIS TEETH — Emmanuel Macron’s government survived a no-confidence vote in the French parliament earlier in the afternoon, after it pushed through a deeply unpopular pensions overhaul without a vote last week, writes Clea Caulcutt. In a high-stakes vote in France’s lower house of parliament, 277 MPs, mostly from the left and the far right, voted in favor of a cross-party motion of no confidence, falling short of the 287 votes needed to topple the government. A second motion, backed only by the far-right National Rally, is not expected to garner enough votes. The motions of no confidence were proposed last week after Macron authorized the use of a controversial constitutional maneuver on Thursday to bypass a vote in parliament on his pensions reform bill. The National Assembly vote came as industrial action disrupted flights, public transport, waste collection and refineries ahead of a nationwide day of protests on Thursday. Trade union leaders hope for a show of force against the government and have also warned that social unrest risks spiraling after several protests in Paris turned violent in recent days.   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID.     Nightly Number 27,000 The total number of layoffs from the tech giant Amazon.com in the first few months of 2023. Amazon announced plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in a company memo this morning, the second largest round of layoffs in the company’s history, adding to the 18,000 employees they said would be laid off in January. Amazon’s workforce doubled during the onset of Covid-19, but consumer demand for certain tech services slowed as the worst of the pandemic eased. RADAR SWEEP WE’RE CALLING IT SOCCER — Ted Lasso is a television character who found his origins in a marketing stunt a decade ago — an attempt by NBC to get Americans to watch more soccer in Europe by introducing the idea of a doofy American college football coach attempting to coach an English soccer team. The concept was successful enough that it turned into a show, which is on its third season and has been a runaway hit, wracking up Emmys. The cast was at the White House today to discuss mental health, a significant focus for the show. But as “Ted Lasso” draws up feel-good narratives about sports, it has spawned imitators outside of the strictly fiction space. There has been a boom in sports documentaries that have portrayed players, franchises and even leagues through the lens of the feel-good. Unfortunately, the sporting world isn’t entirely like that. It’s often ruled by corruption and greed. Alex Shepard reports for The New Republic on what this show and its emulators miss about the cruel world of international sports. Parting Image On this day in 1956: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. greets friends in the Montgomery Courthouse as he arrived for the second day of his trial on a charge of violating Alabama's anti-boycott law in connection with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. | Gene Herrick/AP Photo Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   A message from Action Now Initiative: Insurance company fraud and abuse in Medicare Advantage costs seniors and taxpayers billions. Medicare Advantage plans ensure seniors have a choice of health coverage options. But many federal lawsuits, audits, and investigations have proven that big insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans have systematically overcharged seniors and taxpayers by billions of dollars each year. MedPAC estimates that insurers’ abusive billing practices will cost taxpayers $23 billion in 2023 alone. Now, there’s a proposal to start cracking down on insurance company overcharges in Medicare Advantage. It is an important first step, but it does not go far enough. We can’t afford to wait. We already know the price of a delay – $23 billion in taxpayer dollars projected this year. Congress: Stop the fraud and abuse in Medicare Advantage. Protect our seniors and their benefits.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong Ari Hawkins @_AriHawkins   Follow us

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