Alvin Bragg Gets Terrible News: Attorney Charges Bragg’s ‘Prejudicial Press Conference’ Could Lead To His Disbarment

Prosecutors have a moral and legal imperative to protect the rights of the accused and to seek impartial justice. In that duty to uphold the law, prosecutors should not include statements about the character of the accused or their guilt to the public nor should they include unnecessary and immaterial items in their charging documents. Yet, Alvin Bragg appears to be in violation of that duty according to one Republican lawyer, Daniel R. Street, who wrote an article detailing the deep problems with Mr. Bragg’s “prejudicial press conference” where he first discussed the charges to the press after the indictment.

Mr. Street writes that in the DA’s press conference, he made a series of “inflammatory and prejudicial remarks against President Trump. He publicly attacked President Trump’s character and publicly called into question his credibility and reputation. The DA publicly asserted President Trump’s complicity and guilt in allegedly covering up several unidentified crimes (these alleged crimes are not spelled out in the indictment or the so-called ‘Statement of Facts’ and the DA refused to identify the actual crimes at the press conference, making only vague references to alleged ‘election law’ and ‘tax’ violations). The DA used inflammatory and misleading language to characterize President Trump’s alleged involvement by claiming Trump repeatedly made ‘false statements’.”

Mr. Street covers how New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct “prohibit prosecutors from making statements relating to the character, credibility or reputation of the accused, from expressing any opinion as to the guilt of the accused or from even stating the accused is charge with a crime, unless the prosecutor qualifies the statement to include the presumption of innocence.” He proceeded to list Rule 3.6 which provided a list of delineated items that a prosecutor could talk about but without elaboration.

Street states that Mr. Bragg “definitely ‘elaborated,’ in fact, he repeatedly used inflammatory phrases not included in any of the charging documents or in the Penal Code provisions allegedly violated. He proceeded as though these rules do not exist… This writer [Mr. Street] sat through this miserable press conference several times on multiple media broadcasts, including the CBS News broadcast linked by the DA’s own website, and could not identify one word about the presumption of innocence or that the DA’s claims are ‘merely accusations.’ In fact, the DA’s contentions throughout the press conference are stated as categorical facts, not accusations at all.”

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Mr. Street also further elaborated on how several assertions by Mr. Bragg in that conference were also misleading and listed several such statements. He proceeded to comment that each statement was an assault upon Mr. Trump’s character, credibility, and reputation in violation of the rules of conduct. He further noted that “these prejudicial and inflammatory remarks are made about ledger code entries made by the Trump Organization Controller for ‘legal expenses’ and check stubs identifying payments as for a ‘retainer’ for given months.”

He argued that “The very use of the words ‘false statements’ by the DA is misleading, inflammatory and prejudicial, since the average person hearing this will think President Trump literally made false statements, when in fact, the DA is speaking about allegedly incorrect notations on ledgers and check stubs Trump himself did not even make.”

He further argued that the press conference served virtually no other purpose but to condemn the accused in violation of another rule of conduct. He further noted the frivolous detail of immaterial matters in the Statement of Facts and that there is no provision under the law that permits a prosecutor to smear the accused by “creating purposeless and illegitimate records.”

Mr. Street concluded his article by noting that prosecutors do get disciplined for violating such rules (like in issuing prejudicial comments to the press). Some prosecutors have even gotten disbarred and some defendants had their criminal convictions reversed due to such violations.

Mr. Bragg has not only been slammed by all quarters for controversial conduct when it comes to Trump but has been branded by a former New York Police Commissioner as a “major contributor” to his own city’s crime problem.